Galileo's idol

de Nick Wilding

'Galileo's Idol' is a historical case-study of the use of information in the making of early modern scientific knowledge. It studies the relationship between natural philosophical and political practices in the Venetian Mediterranean at the start of the seventeenth century. Using the figure of Galileo's closest friend and confidant, Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571-1620), it shows how techniques of political information exchange were appropriated by early practitioners of the new science.