A fresh view
When Galileo offered his opposers the chance to look into the telescope, many of them refused. They thought that that instrument was a trick of the Devil, a deceit to our perception to drift man away from the way of Truth - away from God. This so-called argument had been used so many times - e.g. when the opposers of the theory of evolution claimed that the Devil put bones and skulls of stranger antediluvian beasts into the rocks to deceive man - to demonstrate the mighty powers of unreason. I really cannot grasp how people can maintain such stances today but, well, this happens all the day, so this could be a limitation of my own little mind. However nobody can deny that that rough telescope - together with Van Leeuwenhoek's primitive microscope - was the beginning of a revolution in our way to look at the world and understand it. The scope of our (admittedly augmented) senses spans now from elementary particles to the remotest regions of space and time, including along the way that awesome marvels that we call cells.
That said, this humble shot portraits a coin operated telescope (a rather pompous name, but I am aware that many people love them, and there is even a group in Flickr dedicated to them) in Montisola, Lake Iseo, Italy*. I must admit that I have not looked into it (just like Galileo's foes...), but I loved the strikingly fresh view on the world offered by its external metal shell - especially how it creates two images of myself: one could go at work as usual, and the other could leisurely wander capturing photos all the time ;-)
* In the background on the right you can see the small island of Saint Paul
A fresh view
When Galileo offered his opposers the chance to look into the telescope, many of them refused. They thought that that instrument was a trick of the Devil, a deceit to our perception to drift man away from the way of Truth - away from God. This so-called argument had been used so many times - e.g. when the opposers of the theory of evolution claimed that the Devil put bones and skulls of stranger antediluvian beasts into the rocks to deceive man - to demonstrate the mighty powers of unreason. I really cannot grasp how people can maintain such stances today but, well, this happens all the day, so this could be a limitation of my own little mind. However nobody can deny that that rough telescope - together with Van Leeuwenhoek's primitive microscope - was the beginning of a revolution in our way to look at the world and understand it. The scope of our (admittedly augmented) senses spans now from elementary particles to the remotest regions of space and time, including along the way that awesome marvels that we call cells.
That said, this humble shot portraits a coin operated telescope (a rather pompous name, but I am aware that many people love them, and there is even a group in Flickr dedicated to them) in Montisola, Lake Iseo, Italy*. I must admit that I have not looked into it (just like Galileo's foes...), but I loved the strikingly fresh view on the world offered by its external metal shell - especially how it creates two images of myself: one could go at work as usual, and the other could leisurely wander capturing photos all the time ;-)
* In the background on the right you can see the small island of Saint Paul