ABSTRACT
The previous chapter ended with the assertion by Whitehead that the discoveries of Galileo have had more impact than the Reformation in alienating us from the earth. Living with the effects of both these events for another eighty years after he made those comments, one must agree with him and with Arendt that in many ways Galileo’s discovery has been the one with the greatest impact. She quotes Whitehead: ‘Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir.’ Nothing in these words, she says, is an exaggeration. Like the birth in a manger, which spelt not the end of antiquity but the beginning of something so unexpectedly and unpredictably new that neither hope nor fear could have anticipated it, those first glances into the universe through an instrument adjusted to human senses and destined to uncover what definitely lies beyond them, set the stage for an entirely new world view and determined the course of other events (Arendt 1958: 257-8).
