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39 Galileo’s Finger Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, Italy The ecstatic canticle of his name: Galileo Galilei, that master, father of physics, science’s martyr. Centuries have shed false heresy’s shame. His finger points to the heavenly claim, though enshrined in glass and alabaster, that the sun, not the earth, is a fixed star. Expect favor, like the phased moon, to wane and wax again. One thin digit amid astrolabes, sextants, armillary spheres, exiled from his shriven corpus brought down to Santa Croce from hills where he hid. May his soul assume a place with seekers and sages. Here we’ll venerate his bones. ...

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