It has long been said that there was a contest between the benighted Roman Catholic Church and the enlightened Galileo Galilei. Now even the NYTimes acknowledges that the story was never that simple. See A Display on Galileo With Catholic Overtones (July 22, 2010). See also The Galileo Affair. Should we be surprised that Bertolt Brecht was a bit careless with his historiography? No.
The dynamic evidence page
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.
3 comments:
Peter, I enjoyed the one article on the museum and Galileo. The statue of him is beautiful and the fingers and the tooth well... not so beautiful. Such an interesting story and personality.
The Popes of the Italian Renaissance were generally great promoters of astronomy. "In its historical roots and traditions the Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical institutes in the world. For the first foreshadowing of the Observatory can be traced to the constitution by Pope Gregory XIII of a committee to study the scientific data and implications involved in the reform of the calendar which occurred in 1582." http://vaticanobservatory.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95&Itemid=161
See also Robert L. Numbers, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (2009), http://www.amazon.com/Galileo-Other-Myths-Science-Religion/dp/0674033272/ref=sr_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281907119&sr=1-15
Book review in Booklist:
"Defining myth as just 'a claim that is false,' the editor and other scholars debunk falsehoods about science and religion. The most familiar—that the church imprisoned and tortured Galileo, that medieval Islam was hostile to science, that medieval Christians thought the earth was flat, that the church fought against anesthesia—have long been discredited, yet the briefs on them so admirably distill their history that Wikipedia should swipe them. Others—that the church suppressed science, prohibited dissection, and martyred Giordano Bruno for his scientific work—still have their propagandists. Some remain quite lively, such as that Christianity birthed modern science (see Rodney Stark’s For the Glory of God, 2003), that intelligent design challenges evolution scientifically, and that creationism is a strictly American phenomenon. Many are known primarily, perhaps, to specialists, and one or two may startle those who thought themselves in the know about such figures as Descartes and Newton. The pieces on all 25 have been written and edited for accessibility, making the book excellent for ready reference as well as recreational reading." --Ray Olson
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I guess I'll get into trouble with many of my academic colleagues for being so persistently pro-Catholic. And I'm not even Catholic. Should I convert? (Of course, I'm not sure the ROC would have me; I do not meet its standards.)
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