The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice." .
- Mahatma Gandhi.
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.".
- Martin Luther King Jr., "Strength to Love".
For thousands of years, nations and their people have questioned scientific discoveries as well as their place in the midst of politics, humanity and other social institutions such as the church, who, up until the early 18th Century, controlled the institutes of higher learning where men of deep religious faith studied the sciences. Bertolt Brecht's Galileo Galilei, a great Renaissance scientist, was one of these men, whose ideas were constantly controlled and scrutinized by Church officials if they questioned the bible's traditional ways of thought. Although he himself was a Catholic, in the 1600's, Galileo finds himself in conflict with the Catholic Church and other scientists for his discoveries which contradict the Aristotelian astronomy they had for so long believed. Because of this, after being taken into custody by the Inquisition, Galileo spends his life striving to justify science and its place in the midst of all the controversy. Brecht too, in the 20th Century challenges the position of science amongst politics and authority. Having seen the horrors of Nazi Germany, the dropping of the atomic bomb, and Stalin's Communism, Brecht begins to incorporate political questions regarding science and its advancements into each of his writings. The Life of Galileo is one of such writings, which was revised three times by Brecht due to these major events that impacted his life and caused him to reconsider his political and scientific beliefs.