cover image Galileo's Muse: Renaissance Mathematics and the Arts

Galileo's Muse: Renaissance Mathematics and the Arts

Mark A. Peterson. Harvard Univ., $28.95 (330p) ISBN 9780674059726

Mount Holyoke professor Peterson reviews Galileo's life and works while discussing his contemporaries and predecessors, classical Greek and Roman views, and the interplay between mathematics and the arts. In excavating the world of Galileo, Peterson explores Dante's poetry and finds new meaning in The Divine Comedy when interpreted mathematically. He also takes a mathematical look at perspective in the works of Piero della Francesca, Leonardo Pisano/Fibonacci, and in the Golden Ratio. In terms of music, Peterson discusses Galileo's study of the ratios between pitches and how this impacts scales and tuning of different instruments. On architecture, Peterson writes: "Galileo takes a fundamentally geometrical, not arithmetical, point of view. He begins with a geometrical theorem about proportions%E2%80%A6this gives him a flexible framework for considering the design. Each part of the architecture is a model for each other part." With these studies as supporting data, Peterson advances the hypothesis that it was the interplay of mathematics in the arts, not the philosophically-bent sciences of the day that evolved into our modern sciences. The book's academic tone and detailed discussions are best suited for readers with an amateur or professional interest in math and science history. (Oct.)