There are more things between heaven and earth, dear reader, than dreamt of in your philosophy. This is the warning that William Shakespeare inscribed onto the lips of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark. Hamlet was rebuking Horatio and his incredulity before the ghost of the dead king. In the Renaissance, “philosophy” designated a wider array of matters than the word does today: it encompassed natural philosophy. Galileo and the Bard of Avon were presumably born the same year (1564): Science in its contemporary understanding was still to be born, and philosophy was the...