The Galilean spirit

The Catalan publishing world is celebrating. A small but essential imprint has been born: Eppur Llibres, founded by scientists Sergi Pérez and Jordi Barenys. This new publisher has a clear and noble objective: to offer some of the most important scientific texts in history in Catalan.

For their debut, the editors have chosen a text by Galileo. A message from beyond the stars, Originally published in Latin in 1610, over four centuries ago, this text, now available in Spanish, is featured in a prologue by astronomy popularizer Joan Anton Català. The translation is by Dr. Joan Carbonell.

A cosmic message It is based on the observational work that Galileo carried out for months thanks to the telescope that had been built, for the first time, by a Dutch optician and which he had hastened to replicate. His findings—the imperfection of the moon and, above all, the fact that it was the Sun and not the Earth that was the center of the solar system—contradicted the Aristotelian theories that had prevailed for two thousand years.

The text passed censorship thanks to the respect Galileo had earned as a scientist and the support he had always received from the powerful Florentine Medici family, but only six years after its publication, Rome banned all texts that went against dogma and decreed that the Inquisition could prosecute.

What did Galileo do? In 1632 he published the text Dialogues on the Two Great World Systemswhich contrasted the geocentric and heliocentric theories, and he did so in Italian, so that everyone could access it. The following year he had to face the tribunal of the Inquisition, which managed—you can imagine with what kind of coercion and threats—to make the scientist recant his ideas. He was sentenced to house arrest, which he served until the day he died.

You have surely heard or read what Galileo did before this tribunal: when he had recanted his theory that it was the Earth that moved around the Sun, he uttered, just before leaving, the famous phraseEppur si muove"And yet it moves."

This detail does not appear in any chronicle until decades after the events, so it seems that it could be a later invention intended to highlight Galileo's conviction and his stubborn and rebellious attitude.

The publishing house that now publishes A cosmic message He has chosen the name Eppur Libros as a declaration of principles: in this post-truth world that threatens us, the spirit of Galileo guides us. We must rebel and stubbornly stand firm on ethics and truth.

The next titles to be published by Eppur Llibres are Experiments with plant hybrids, by Gregor Mendel (the famous experiment with peas that we studied in high school) and The chemical history of a candleFrom Michael Faraday, a lecture for young people on the fundamentals of chemistry.

As I have written on other occasions, we are a fortunate culture to have conscious, bold, and generous people like these scientist editors. A stellar message.