"You will find in this world, Galileo, many, many people who are willing to take someone else's word for the truth—to say something is true because so-and-so said it, or because they read it in a book. This way, you must never be.

"Truth is not found behind a man's reputation. Truth appears only when the answers to questions are searched out by a free mind. This is not the easy path in life, but it is the most rewarding."

So spoke the musician Vincenzio Galilei to his son. And Galileo Galilei was not slow to act on his father's advice. Already he was fascinated by the number magic of the Greek Pythagoras. Soon he would challenge the physics of Aristotle himself, and in time he would questions even what its earthly beneficiaries called divine law.

As all the world knows today, Galileo's questions results in huge steps forward in acceptance of mathematic, physical, and astronomical truths. After setting the stage in sixteenth-century Italy, introducing his vigorous, varied family, and describing his education at monastery and university, this book tells of Galileo's struggle to make those forward steps and thus lay the foundation for modern science.

From the dust jacket