The Weight of the Evidence Read Online Free PDF Page B

particular experiment of Galileo’s which I have in mind. You know something, Church, of the architectural curiosities of Pisa?’
    ‘There’s a leaning tower.’
    ‘Splendid! There is indeed a leaning tower, and from it Galileo conducted one of his most famous experiments. Unfortunately it was an experiment tinged with that frivolity to which he was prone. He had, as you know, become a professor of mathematics at an early age, and this appears to have unsettled him.’
    Mr Church, who was himself presumably committed to the business of becoming a professor of mathematics sooner or later, scowled more darkly than ever. Appleby was beginning to be interested in him.
    ‘This experiment of Galileo’s to which I refer was directed towards the establishment of the Law of Falling Bodies, according to which all bodies fall at the same rate in a vacuum and at the end of a given time have a velocity proportional to the time in which they have been falling, and have traversed a distance proportional to the square of that time.’ Crunkhorn looked expectantly at Hobhouse, as if soliciting that officer’s learned acquiescence. ‘Now Aristotle had maintained otherwise, and Galileo’s colleagues swore by Aristotle.’
    ‘The longest tyranny that ever swayed,’ said Church. This was apparently a quotation, and the young man brightened momentarily at the consciousness of having behaved in a suitably donnish way.
    ‘No doubt. And Galileo determined to demonstrate in a particularly dramatic manner the truth of his own view on the matter. As it happened, his colleagues were in the habit of walking past the base of the leaning tower in a daily academic procession. Galileo climbed the tower, taking with him what we may call a one-pound shot and a ten-pound shot. And these he dropped at what he considered the appropriate moment. Such of his colleagues as were not distracted by a narrow escape from death were forced to confess that the shots had landed virtually simultaneously. Or rather they confessed that so it appeared to them. As Aristotle could not be wrong, it was evident that their eyes must have deceived them.’
    ‘What you tell us is extremely interesting.’ Appleby spoke quite without irony. ‘And the tower here is not unlike a leaning tower: that is to say, it has overhanging turrets which would make it quite a good place for such experiments. But I think that when you say you associate the affair of Professor Pluckrose’s death with Galileo you must have something further in mind?’
    ‘I have. In the university of late there has been a peculiar spirit of levity abroad.’
    Church suddenly grinned. ‘But with Galileo it seems to have been rather a matter of gravity. And with Pluckrose too.’
    Crunkhorn frowned; this joke clearly failed to conform to the best academic canons. ‘A spirit of levity among the younger members of our teaching body. “Ragging” is, I believe, the word. The sort of thing one associates with undergraduates in spurious novels of university life. We have been perturbed by it. And inclined to wonder who is the moving spirit.’ Mr Crunkhorn looked with frank speculation at Mr Church.
    ‘Jokes?’ asked Hobhouse. ‘You don’t suggest that Pluckrose had an enormous meteorite thrown at him by way of a practical joke?’
    ‘I for one’, said Church, ‘fail to remember such a thing even in a spurious novel. But I agree that there have been practical jokes and that there is probably a moving spirit. Which gets us back to Galileo, doesn’t it? Eppur si muove .’ And Church laughed immoderately. After all, a young man quite well able to look after himself.
    Crunkhorn frowned. ‘I certainly don’t suggest that Pluckrose was deliberately killed for fun. Such a suggestion would be rational only if there were ground for supposing the presence of a criminal lunatic about the university. But the thing may well have been a violent and dangerous jest gone wrong – just what Galileo’s