Brecht’s Life of Galileo

I recently read Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo and was delighted to find a boldly forthright dramatization of the scientific method and attitude. Not merely was it passionately pro-science, but had a plethora of keen and pithy insights into the scientific mindset. Here is a representative sample:

[Referring to heliocentrism, sunspots and the various theories around them] Galileo:

My object is not to establish that I was right but to find out if I am. Abandon hope, I say, all ye who enter on observation. They may be vapors, they may be spots, but before we assume that they are spots — which is what would suit us best — we should assume that they are fried fish. In fact we shall question everything all over again. And we shall go forward not in seven-league boots but at a snail’s pace. And what we discover today we shall wipe off the slate tomorrow and only write it up again once we have again discovered it. And whatever we wish to find we shall regard, once found, with particular mistrust. So we shall approach the observation of the sun with an irrevocable determination to establish that the earth does not move. Only when we have failed, have been utterly and hopelessly beaten and are licking our wounds in the profoundest depression, will we start asking if we weren’t right after all, and the earth does go round. (With a twinkle) But once every other hypothesis has crumbled in our hands, then there will be no mercy for those failed to research, and who go talking the same. Take the cloth off the telescope and point it at the sun.

That all being said, Brecht was a Marxist after all, so it would be strange if the play were without fault. There are a number of anti-capitalist jabs and his epistemology has a number of flaws. Brecht also had a decidedly Altruist/Pragmatist ethics that is a prominent feature of the play. These elements undercut Brecht’s Galileo who in many ways is like Robert Stadler.

The worst flaw is that the play reads more like an essay or philosophic dialogue than a work of art. Brecht’s characters are not real human beings but just well-drawn caricatures, and the story follows the events of Galileo’s life too closely to fully embody the conflict between science and religious tyranny. Unlike Ibsen, Brecht feels propagandistic, and I’m tempted to call the work a high-class version of Don’t Look Up that isn’t insufferably obnoxious.

Despite these flaws, I still think Life of Galileo is well worth your time. In a world where religionists and environmentalists are undercutting science, here is a play that will help you preserve a heroic vision of science.

/sb