How can certain events that took place in 17th-century Italy have much relevance to those of the 21st? I'm thinking of the way one of the greatest men in history, the father of physics, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), was treated by the Roman Catholic Church.
The fact that his story is still relevant says much about the cyclical nature of history -- and also about the failure of science and of reason to replace superstition and mumbo jumbo. Its failure to consign religion and other irrational practices to the scrap heap says much about the human mind.
I was left with these thoughts after a recent trip to the theater, where I saw the marvelous "The Life of Galileo" by the master German dramatist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). It is the story of how Galileo's work vindicated the theory of the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), by showing that the Earth did indeed orbit the Sun, rather than vice versa.