Starry Starry Nights

Being confronted with the unenviable situation of having to choose between one wrong and another is by no means unfamiliar to leaders.

Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, the leader has to find the delicate line separating a compromise from a sell out. He faces what Joseph Badaracco, a Harvard guru on ethics, calls “defining moments”.

Bertolt Brecht examines this dilemma in his play, The Life of Galileo. Brecht highlights the key aspects of Galileo’s personality: his dedication to his students (he would rather purchase books for his students than pay his milkman), his great faith in the scientific method (“truth is the child of time, not of authority”) and his dedication to research and pursuit of knowledge, if necessary, bending his ethics a little (he claims to have invented the telescope and sells many telescopes, whereas it has already been invented). Finding that the pay he receives at Venice isn’t enough to keep his research going, Galileo moves to Florence, where the pay is better, but gives him less freedom to pursue research.

Florence is also much more under the influence of Rome and the Inquisition than Venice, and he soon reaches the dividing line between new ideas and heresy.

He propounds the theory of a heliocentric universe and infinite heavens and makes it available to not only his peers, but also to the public, by writing in Italian rather than Latin, the language of the Church. “The smell of flesh burning” is pervasive, Galileo is arrested, shown the instruments of torture, and tried by the Inquisition.

His students and society look up to Galileo not merely as a teacher but as a leader pioneering a revolution in the approach to knowledge. They expect him to be true to his own teaching that “he who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a criminal”. But Galileo lets them down — he recants, and loses the respect of his students. “So much is gained when one man stands up and says, “No!” and Galileo misses this opportunity. He is kept a prisoner of the Church for life and permitted to do only “approved research”.

There is a twist in the play in the last scene. After many years, his student Andrea visits Galileo, who is close to death. Galileo tells Andrea that he has been secretly writing his forbidden theories and stashing them away.

He hands over the manuscript to Andrea, requesting him to smuggle the book and publish it outside Italy. Andrea realises that his judgement of Galileo was unfair — in fact, Galileo has served society by recanting and living on.

Galileo had a difficult choice. As an intellectual leader, he could have stood up for his belief in the methods of science and risked death, like Joan of Arc. But he was also a genius who had much to contribute to science (and did) by living on, unlike Joan, who created a blinding halo at her stake.

By being burnt, she left a legacy that was larger than what she could have left had she recanted and stayed in prison. Martyrdom is heroic, but is the only worthwhile outcome in society the production of heroes? Immediately after the recantation, Andrea exclaims within hearing of Galileo: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes!” to which Galileo responds, “Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.”

Heroism is the driver of leadership in the Carlylean view, but this view has its limitations, as has the Tolstoyean view of leaders being mere passive products of history.

Can a leader achieve more by refusing martyrdom? Galileo himself is unsparing in his condemnation of himself: “A man who has done what I have done cannot be tolerated in the ranks of science.” He tells Andrea: “You are yourself a teacher now. Can you bring yourself to take a hand such as mine?” Andrea has no hesitation in doing so.

The play also raises the issue of responsibility of science for the consequences of its research. It was written at a time when the atomic bomb had just been exploded and the horrors of the “advancements” of science were brought home. There were raging arguments, on just how much scientists were to be held accountable to society.

Brecht’s view is that knowledge generation and dissemination cannot be separate — science must be available to all. By writing in Italian, Galileo created a wider awareness of the possibilities of science, but this also generated conflict between faith and reason.

Scientific methodology, like “rational” management has its place. But so has emotion-based concepts such as faith and trust. Leadership is about evoking faith, and if reason enables an organisation to advance, faith enables it to do so coherently.

The binding force of organisations (like a society itself) can never be reason; it can only be faith. In the words of Galileo in the play, “The aim of science isn’t to open a door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error”.

Organisations and societies based on faith alone degenerate into superstition and dogmatism. Those that stand on reason alone (where everyone doubts everything) may degenerate into a collection of disparate, self-seeking individuals. Reason can limit infinite error, but cannot bring about wisdom. True leaders understand the distinction between reason and faith and arrive at a balance.