The Fall and Galileo’s Law of Falling Bodies

I argue that recognizing Milton’s mathematical interests offers us a wholly new vantage point on Milton’s views of Galileo. The poet’s evocations of Galileo’s telescopic observations are well known, but his allusions to Galileo’s mathematically formulated Law of Falling Bodies remain obscure. Although the poet deeply values Galileo’s efforts to look at physical space and bodies through his telescope, he ultimately favors Galileo’s efforts to look through physical space and bodies via mathematics. In Galileo’s mathematics, Milton finds something akin to his own poetic ambition: “to see and tell/Of things invisible to moral sight” (3.54–55).