Abstract
We have seen that, besides the astronomical observational difficulties, another serious obstacle to the acceptance of the Copernican system stemmed from the theological biblical objections. Galileo himself, however, attached no significant force or great relevance to the biblical objections, as he did for the case of the observational difficulties. But many other people found the biblical objections unanswerable and decisive, and these people included highly competent and otherwise progressive minded astronomers and mathematicians, such as Tycho Brahe and Christopher Clavius. Thus Galileo did not get involved in the theological controversy until his views and his person were attacked as heretical and theologically erroneous. But when he did get involved, his defense of the Copernican system from theological objections was intellectually as cogent and forceful as his defense of heliocentrism from the astronomical objections. Moreover, although opposed by the ecclesiastic establishment, Galileo was inspired, encouraged, and supported by several maverick professional Catholic theologians who wrote similar and complementary critiques of the scriptural objections. Notable among them were Carmelite friar Paolo Antonio Foscarini and Dominican friar Tommaso Campanella.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Cesi to Galileo, 12 January 1612, in Favaro 12: 128-31, at 130.54; Campanella (1628, 218, 222, 224).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
My distinction here is similar to one made by Beretta (2005b, 244) when he argues that in the 1616 condemnation of Copernicanism, “the issue is not primarily concerned with hermeneutics - that is, the principles of biblical exegesis - but with criteriology - that is, inquiry about the validity of knowledge, establishing criteria by which truth can be distinguished from error.” For Beretta (2005b), the main principle involved was one about the hierarchy of disciplines, theology and natural philosophy in particular: Church officials were allegedly upholding, and Galileo and his supporters were denying, the priority of theology over natural philosophy; this was a principle that was supposedly an essential part of scholastic criteriology and that was explicitly promulgated by the Fifth Lateran Council of 1513, which used it to condemn the thesis of the mortality of the soul. However, I hesitate to adopt such a term as “criteriology,” which I find too opaque, ambiguous, and unconventional; moreover, although the hierarchy of theology and philosophy was an important issue, and although as we will see below that Galileo discusses it explicitly in the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, and although Beretta deserves credit for having called attention to this issue, his emphasis on it is too one-sided. Finally, I see a serious difficulty with the analogy which Beretta tries to articulate between the Aristotelian thesis of the mortality of the soul and the Copernican thesis of the earth’s motion: whereas the latter is a question of natural philosophy, the former is not, but is treated in such other branches of philosophy as metaphysics, rational psychology, etc.
- 11.
Part of this will be found in Chapter 7 below.
- 12.
- 13.
Blackwell (1991, 23); cf. Luther, Tischreden (Weimar, 1912-1921, IV, no. 4638).
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
Carlo Conti to Galileo, 7 July and 18 August 1612, in Favaro 11: 354-355, 376; the cardinal apparently even encouraged his brother Conte Conti, who was living in Parma and had some ideas on the connection between Genesis and astronomy, to write to Galileo (cf. Conte Conti to Galileo, 11 April 1614, in Favaro 12: 47-48); the cardinal had earlier received a gift copy of The Sidereal Messenger (Conti to Galileo, 11 April 1610, in Favaro 10: 311-312). McMullin (2005b, 173) states that Carlo Conti was “prefect of the Holy Office” (namely chairman), which if true would be an extremely interesting and important fact; but I have been unable to confirm McMullin’s claim, after consulting Favaro (20: 426), Gebler (1879a, 40), Santillana (1955, 26-27), Fantoli (2003b, 116, 126), Mayaud (1997, 45), Camerota (2004, 261, 264), Pesce (2005), and Beltrán Marí (2006, 198).
- 19.
- 20.
Favaro 11: 598-599, Drake (1957, 190).
- 21.
- 22.
Favaro 12: 123, 19: 307.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
Favaro 19: 297-298, Finocchiaro (1989, 134-135).
- 26.
Favaro 19: 307-311, Finocchiaro (1989, 136-141).
- 27.
Blackwell (1991, 39-40, 113 n. 4).
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
Favaro 19: 320-321, Finocchiaro (1989, 146-147).
- 33.
- 34.
- 35.
Bucciantini (1995, 89), Favaro 5: 407-408.
- 36.
The other one is the one I mentioned earlier involving the hymn recited by priests on Tuesdays as part of the “liturgy of the hours” of the “divine office.”
- 37.
Joshua 10: 13-14, King James Version. So far this passage corresponds to Favaro 5: 411, lines 14-19, and the translation is my own. For the next several lines (19-28), I quote the translation given by Blackwell (1991, 63).
- 38.
- 39.
Finocchiaro (1989, 146); cf. Favaro 19: 320-321.
- 40.
- 41.
Finocchiaro (1989, 67-68), or Galilei (2008, 147); cf. Favaro 12:172. Bellarmine was probably adopting this discussion from Thomas Aquinas (article 6 of question 1 of Part II of the Second Part of Summa theologica), since Bellarmine makes a distinction and gives an example that are identical to Aquinas’s; this important connection has been insightfully suggested by Mayaud (2005, 6: 349-350), although the details of his particular interpretation and the general tenor of his work are questionable and excessively apologetic.
- 42.
- 43.
On the other hand, as discussed in Sections 8.13 and 8.17, Galileo would prevail in the long run. In fact, the error in Bellarmine’s thinking, which Galileo is exposing here, is precisely the one implicitly acknowledged in 1893 by Pope Leo XII in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, and explicitly admitted in 1979-1992 by Pope John Paul II in his rehabilitation of Galileo.
- 44.
- 45.
Foscarini (1615a). Cf. Foscarini (1635; 1641; 1661; 1663; 1710; 1811; 1853; 1991b; 1992; 1997; 2001). Many editions of Foscarini’s book lengthen the title by adding the clause “in which it is shown that the opinion agrees with, and is reconciled with, the passages of Sacred Scripture and theological propositions which are commonly adduced against it” (Blackwell 1991, 217). But this was an editorial addition in the 1635 Strasbourg edition and emphasizes an aspect of the book that is admittedly important but not the only important one.
- 46.
- 47.
This multiplicity of arguments is perhaps what gives some scholars the impression that “Foscarini’s Letter … contains a loose collection of theological and hermeneutical arguments, some of which do not always agree … Foscarini gives every appearance of inconsistency unless one interprets his Letter not so much as a tightly knit defense of Copernicanism as a panoply of arguments for facilitating its acceptance” (Howell 2002, 197-198). In my view, Foscarini’s various arguments are distinct, but not inconsistent with each other, and they all justify the same conclusion, that Copernicanism is compatible with Scripture; it is this conclusion that gives coherence and unity to the Letter.
- 48.
In speaking of the principle of limited scriptural authority, I am adopting McMullin’s terminology; he uses such labels as “principle of limitation” (McMullin 1998, 298) and “principle of scriptural limitation” (McMullin 2005c, 95), whereas in the past I have used such longer and clumsier expressions as the principle that Scripture is not a scientific authority, or the principle denying the scientific authority of Scripture, or the principle of the nonscientific authority of Scripture.
- 49.
Ecclesiastes (1: 13; 3: 11; 8; 9), 1 Corinthians 4: 5.
- 50.
Sentences such as this last clause have led Howell (2002, 196-198) to attribute to Foscarini a general skepticism about human knowledge. By contrast, I take them as an indication at most of a fallibilist position; but I think Foscarini’s main point is not even fallibilism, but rather that knowledge about nature must be acquired by human beings through their own efforts.
- 51.
Some scholars (Boaga 1990, 186) seem to ignore this line of reasoning in Foscarini (1615a, 30-34) and portray him as accepting the philosophical primacy and authority of Scripture; they do so on the basis of a passage (Foscarini 1615a, 7-8) that seems to say that if there is a contradiction between Scripture and human reason or sense, Scripture ought to have priority; but such an interpretation neglects a qualification which Foscarini adds to the alleged contradiction, namely that the scriptural passage is so expressed that its interpretation is not subject to argument.
- 52.
- 53.
- 54.
- 55.
I would thus be hesitant to speak of it as a “treatise,” as McMullin (1998, 302; 2005a, 3) and Pesce (1987, 241; 2005, 89) do. This tends to distract one away from the key purpose of refuting the scriptural objection and into searching (e.g., Carroll 1997; 1999; 2001) for a generality and systematicity in Galileo’s hermeneutical views which would be at odds with this main purpose.
- 56.
- 57.
- 58.
Favaro 5: 315-323, 323-330, 330-335, 335-339, 339-343, respectively.
- 59.
Favaro 5: 343-348. In this section of this chapter, simple references to Favaro (1890-1909, vol. 5), will be given in parenthesis by citing just the page number, as done here.
- 60.
I believe this interpretation offers a simple and elegant solution to the problem that here Galileo apparently does what elsewhere he claims one is not supposed to, namely to use Scripture to support an astronomical theory. In the history of the Galileo affair, this problem facilitated the rise of a genuine myth which it took a long time to extirpate, that is the myth that Galileo was condemned not for being a good astronomer but for being a bad theologian; cf. Chapter 10 below. More recently, and on an altogether different level, Pesce (2000, 48-50; 2005, 1-2, 226-229) has struggled with Galileo’s alleged “concordism” (the thesis that biblical statements on physical reality agree with claims established from scientific research); although Pesce’s general account and mine overlap in significant ways, his view of the “concordism” problem forces him to attribute to Galileo a contradiction or incoherence, which my interpretation avoids. Similarly, McMullin (2005c, 101-102, 110-111) is right to interpret this Galilean criticism as an “ad hominem” argument, namely an argument that derives a conclusion not acceptable to an opponent from premises acceptable to him but not necessarily to the arguer; but to avoid conveying a misleading impression, one should add that this sense of “ad hominem argument” is the seventeenth-century meaning of the term, and that ad hominem arguments so construed (although they establish a merely conditional and not a categorical conclusion) are nevertheless one of the most fair-minded, effective, and sound methods of criticism; and more importantly, it must be added that such arguments are not ad hominem in the sense that is most common today, according to which an ad hominem argument is the fallacy of attempting to refute a conclusion by discrediting the moral character or practical situation of the arguer; cf. Finocchiaro (1980, 231-232, 368-370, 402-403, 416, 430; 2005a, 65-91, 277-291, 329-339). Analogously, Lerner (1999, 81-82) is right to protest against the attempts by recent clerical apologists (Brandmüller 1982, 1992; Poupard 1992) to try to praise Galileo as a theologian in order to demean him as a physicist and methodologist, but that is not to say that one should attribute to Galileo an “incohérence qu’il n’a pas su éviter sur le terrain exégétique” (Lerner 1999, 81); furthermore, Lerner (2005, 20) is right that Galileo held that a demonstrated physical truth could be used to interpret Scripture accordingly, but Galileo’s example of such a truth is solar axial rotation (demonstrable from sunspots), not geokinetic heliocentrism (which he held to be merely probable and in any case was the very issue in question in this discussion); and Lerner (2005, 21) is also correct that “Galileo’s efforts to interpret some key passages of the Scripture … in terms of heliocentrism, were not for him a mere rhetorical or diplomatic expedient,” but the reason is not that Galileo’s “apparent contradiction” (Lerner 2005, 20) was real, but rather that he was engaged in the logically and epistemologically sound technique of criticizing an argument by criticizing the truth of one of its premises and by deriving unwanted consequences from its own presuppositions. Finally, Biagioli too (2003; 2006a, 219-259) struggles with the internal stresses and strains of Galileo’s views and seems to have his own way out of the difficulties, although I am not sure I understand it fully due to its being laden with terminology and concepts originating from Jacques Derrida. See also Beltrán Marí (2006a, 189, 682, n. 40), Fabris (1986, 43-44), Mayaud (2005, 1: 259-62, 6: 359).
- 61.
This interpretation of mine is reminiscent of, but different from, the accounts given by Howell and by McMullin. Howell (2002, 186-196) claims that Galileo had three approaches, methods, or strategies (stemming from Augustine) to answer the scriptural objection to Copernicanism; his preferred strategy was to separate the books of Scripture and nature and so make scriptural statements irrelevant to the earth’s motion; if his opponents insisted on relevance, he would stress the harmony between the two books, the primacy of demonstrated physical truths, and the need for nonliteral interpretation; if they insisted on literalism, he would argue that even then Copernicus was more in accordance with scripture than Ptolemy. Analogously, McMullin (2005c) attributes to Galileo several Augustinian principles and consequent strategies, the main three of which involve accommodation (PA), scriptural limitation (PSL), and prudence (PP): “The combined implication of these three principles for the Copernican issue is clear. The Scriptures are simply irrelevant to deciding such matters as the motion of sun or earth (PSL). Further, even if PSL were to be set aside, the writers of Scripture are clearly accommodating themselves to our normal modes of speech, to what appears to us, when they speak of the sun as in motion or the earth as fixed (PA). Finally, even if both PSL and PA were to be set aside, ordinary prudence would counsel that on an issue where in the future a contrary demonstration could well be found, no dogmatic position should be taken now that at a later time could serve to discredit the Scriptures generally (PP)” (McMullin 2005c, 107). The similarities between the Howell-McMullin’s accounts and mine are that the three logical criticisms of the scriptural argument which I am attributing to Galileo can also generate three corresponding rhetorical “strategies” depending on context and on whom he is talking to; that one of my strategies is essentially the same as one of theirs (the one I call Galileo’s main criticism, aiming to show that the scriptural argument is a nonsequitur, because of the nonscientific authority of Scripture); and that my third criticism corresponds to Howell’s third strategy. However, it seems to me that McMullin’s and Howell’s stress on a multiplicity of strategies is excessively rhetorical in the sense that it portrays Galileo as excessively concerned with influencing people and “winning” arguments, rather than primarily searching for the truth; moreover, it leads them to find tensions and incoherences in Galileo’s position that are not really there; and it prevents them from appreciating Galileo’s main point, namely the nonscientific authority of Scripture and the need to understand clearly, apply correctly, and justify properly this principle.
- 62.
- 63.
- 64.
- 65.
- 66.
- 67.
- 68.
- 69.
Thus, for example, Howell (2002, 195) is absolutely right when he says that in the Letter to Christina “Galileo did not attempt to prove that the Copernican theory was taught in the Bible; he only wanted to remove scriptural objections against it.”
- 70.
For more documentation of this last point, see Finocchiaro (1980) and Chapters 3 and 9 of this book.
- 71.
- 72.
The Augustinian aspect of Galileo’s Letter to Christina has been discussed by McMullin (1998, 1999, 2005c) and by Howell (2002, 188-189; cf. 2005). McMullin stresses that Augustine developed his hermeneutical ideas while attempting to respond to the Manichaean philosophical (or scientific) criticism of the Genesis account of creation; that Augustine’s hermeneutics can be reconstructed in terms of a concept of the “literal meaning” of Scripture and a set of seven distinct interpretive principles; that these Augustinian principles constitute an incoherent set; but that it is valuable to point this out “not to accuse Augustine of inconsistency in what were obviously only tentative strategies on his part, but because of the consequences of tensions of this sort when Augustine’s texts later reappear from Galileo’s pen” (McMullin 2005c, 97). My reservations about such an approach and account are that parts of the discussions quickly become an exercise of explaining something by means of things that are more obscure and less intelligible than the original; that for example, Augustine’s notion of “literal meaning” turns out to be extremely complex and in any case such as to have little to do with the ordinary meaning of “literal meaning”; that at the meta-level of the question of the proper interpretation of Augustine’s own texts, I would want to question the propriety of formulating general principles that are not explicitly stated in the text under scrutiny, on the basis of Augustine’s concrete interpretive practices in which such principles are allegedly implicit, for the mutual incompatibility of such principles must be regarded as the result of interpretive exaggerations or over-generalizations on the part of the interpreter, rather than tensions in the mind of the author under scrutiny; that such an approach to Augustine has an instructive similarity to the approach to Galileo’s scientific methodology that tries to attribute to him general epistemological or methodological principles (apriorism, empiricism, mathematicism, positivism, anarchism, etc.) on the basis of concrete Galilean analyses of concrete scientific problems; and finally, that my point is that in such cases the critic must formulate interpretations that are nuanced enough to be able to describe the complexities of the situation under scrutiny without over-simplification; cf. Finocchiaro (1980, 145-166; 1997a, 335-356).
- 73.
I believe McMullin (1998, 299) and Howell (2002, 197) go too far in denying historical novelty to Galileo’s hermeneutical efforts, just as other scholars have gone too far in the opposite direction of attributing him novelty. My point is that if he was not advocating some significant novelty then the issue would not have been controversial and he need not have written his essay; and that if his proposals were perceived as too novel, then his effort was doomed; thus I portray Galileo’s position as partly novel and partly traditional, and self-consciously so.
- 74.
For more details on this, see Finocchiaro (2005b, 263-266).
- 75.
- 76.
- 77.
McMullin (1998, 308-311; 2005c, 107-110). Sylla (1991, 218-223) advances a similar view. McMullin’s purpose should not be misunderstood, for he is at pains to point out that “the tension between the principles he [Galileo] sprinkles throughout the Letter to the Grand Duchess as ways to defuse the challenge to Copernicanism is worth the extended attention devoted to it here not so much because it implies a logical failure on Galileo’s part but for what it tells us about the exegetic strategies potentially available at the time for dealing with the sort of crisis that was in the making in Rome” (McMullin 2005c, 111). According to McMullin, Galileo’s flirtation with the principle of priority of Scripture is the result of two things.
The first is Galileo’s complete and unqualified acceptance of the principle of priority of demonstration, which McMullin (2005c, 108) formulates as asserting that “where the literal (in the sense of normal) reading of a scriptural text conflicts with a philosophical [i.e., “scientific”] demonstration, a different interpretation must be sought.” The alleged connection is that given the priority of demonstration, and given the existence of such a “demonstration” of Copernicanism, then one strategy for its theological or scriptural defense would be to present this demonstration and appeal to this principle, without having to appeal to any other principles such as the principle of limited scriptural authority; but note that such a strategy presupposes possession of a “demonstration,” and indeed McMullin (2005c, 109-110) thinks that “at the time he composed the Letter he was evidently optimistic about the chances of demonstrating the Copernican claims.” The difficulty with this interpretation is that around 1615, Galileo was aware that he possessed a conclusive, demonstrative proof of only parts of Copernicanism (such as the heliocentricity of Venus’s orbit and the changeability of the heavenly region), but not of the crucial geokinetic claim, in regard to which he felt its status to be less than demonstrated. This is shown by the probabilistic language and qualifications contained in his “Discourse on the Tides” (Finocchiaro 1989, 119-133; cf. Favaro 5: 377-395); by the fact that in the Letter to Christina he describes his defense of Copernicanism as amounting to a process of “confirmation,” in a sense distinct from “demonstration” (Galilei 2008, 110-113; Finocchiaro 1989, 88-89; Favaro 5: 310-312); and by the fact that in the “Considerations on the Copernican Opinion” the way he formulates his over-all general claim is by means of the comparative judgment that the pro-Copernican arguments are much stronger than the geostatic ones (Galilei 2008, 151; Finocchiaro 1989, 73; Favaro 5: 354). But aside from these, there is the very fact that the Letter to Christina is full of epistemological, methodological, theological, hermeneutical, and exegetic considerations, but does not contain a proof of the earth’s motion; if he believed he had such a proof, the thing to do would have been to follow the “direct” strategy, as I called it above in my discussion of Foscarini; that is, Galileo would have simply produced the conclusive demonstration.
Second, McMullin tries to exploit Galileo’s tendency to speak as if he accepted the Aristotelian ideal of science as demonstration, according to which “demonstrations” (in a suitably deductive and apodictic sense of the term) are necessary in science. From this ideal, together with the principle of priority of demonstration, it would follow that science has nothing to fear from Scripture, for scientific demonstrations of natural phenomena will always take precedence over scriptural assertions to the contrary; this is quite consistent with giving Scripture priority outside the domain of scientific demonstration. My difficulty with this account is that Galileo’s attraction toward the demonstrative ideal is not his only tendency, and that other inclinations were at work, and in fact one could interpret his career as a movement further and further away from that Aristotelian ideal and toward a fallibilist and probabilist one. Moreover, even if one equates scientific knowledge with “demonstrated” propositions, such scientific demonstrations have to be searched for and discovered, and the search for scientific demonstrations cannot avoid using and dealing with arguments that have less than a demonstrative force, and such scientific research would have much to fear from the principle of priority of Scripture. Thus to attribute Galileo such a strategy would be a quite uncharitable attribution of methodological shortsightedness, which I for one would not want to make without overwhelming evidence.
- 78.
- 79.
- 80.
- 81.
- 82.
- 83.
- 84.
Lerner (2001b, xcv-c, 1-2; 2006, xxxiii-xxxv). Also correct, of course, is Germana Ernst’s Italian translation of this phrase in the book’s title as modo di filosofare, in Campanella (1999, 2006); but it is puzzling that in the middle of Chapter 3 (Campanella 2006, 98-99) she should translate modum philosophandi as filosofia.
- 85.
- 86.
- 87.
Besides the passages to be mentioned below, also revealing, although indirectly relevant, is Campanella’s (n.d.) poem “Modo di filosofare”; see also Failla to Galileo, 6 September 1616, in Favaro 12: 277.
- 88.
- 89.
I believe my interpretation is in essential agreement with Headley’s (1997, 172-177), although he speaks of the principle of libertas philosophandi, which is even more general than the principle of limited scriptural authority. On the other hand, here I am disagreeing with Lerner’s (2001b, xcv-c; 2006, xxxiii-xxxv) description of the manner of philosophizing attributed to Galileo in the Apologia. Lerner seems to be saying that in that work Campanella was attributing Galileo a naïve empiricism à la Bernardino Telesio, although elsewhere Lerner (1995b) argues that in other writings Campanella’s interpretation was more nuanced, and that in any case it was partly incorrect. Lerner has also objected (private correspondence) that my interpretation assumes that Campanella was acquainted with Galileo’s Letters to Castelli and to Christina, which is highly unlikely, at least when he wrote the Apologia. However, my interpretation need only assume that Campanella was acquainted with The Sidereal Messenger, and we know from his letter to Galileo of 13 January 1611 that he had read that work (Favaro 11: 21-26); Campanella was clearly perceptive enough to understand this aspect (the scriptural independence) of Galileo’s manner of philosophizing, and indeed in the same letter (Favaro 11: 24) he predicted that some theologians will start murmuring against it but claimed that theology itself could come to Galileo’s defense.
- 90.
- 91.
- 92.
- 93.
Campanella (1622, 13) refers to this passage simply as Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1; and this reference is glossed more specifically as Ecclesiastes 1:13 by many scholars (e.g., Firpo 1968, 20; Blackwell 1994, 54). However, the verse quoted by Campanella is actually Ecclesiastes 3:11, as one can see from Headley (1997, 173-174) and Lerner (2001b, 208-209, n. 28); the confusion is easily explained in light of the similarity of the two verses. Headley (1997, 173-176) also gives a valuable analysis of Campanella’s four references to, and glosses on, Ecclesiastes 3:11.
- 94.
- 95.
When I say that in 1633 Galileo was condemned as a suspected heretic, I do not mean to imply that he was found guilty of a formal heresy (and that the formal heresy in question was belief in Copernicanism), since being a heretic also included other, less serious crimes, such as strong suspicion of heresy, vehement suspicion of heresy, and slight suspicious of heresy; and in fact Galileo was condemned for vehement suspicion of heresy. For some clarifications, see Finocchiaro (1989, 14-15, 363 n. 86; 2005b, 11-12, 271-74).
- 96.
A few days after Galileo’s death on 8 January 1642, these words were uttered by pope Urban VIII to Tuscan ambassador Francesco Niccolini, as a reason to veto the plan to erect an honorific mausoleum for Galileo in the church of Santa Croce in Florence; see Niccolini to Gondi, 25 January 1642, in Favaro 18: 378-379. In that context, the phrase had an anti-Galilean connotation, but later it acquired an anti-clerical meaning.
- 97.
Koestler (1959); cf. Section 8.15.
- 98.
- 99.
- 100.
Soccorsi (1947), McMullin (2005b). Although my reconstruction here owes much more to McMullin than to Soccorsi, and although McMullin apparently formulated his account independently of Soccorsi, the similarities between the two views are striking, and someone acquainted with Soccorsi will perceive McMullin’s account as a fuller, more elaborate, and updated version of Soccorsi’s view. For an account of Soccorsi, see Finocchiaro (2005b, 284-294) and Section 8.14.
- 101.
- 102.
Here one might also add the factor involving the principle that theology is the queen of the sciences and the unwillingness on the part of theologians to relinquish the power resulting from this principle. But I am not sure this is a distinct third major factor because it may be regarded as a part of the other two factors.
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Finocchiaro, M.A. (2010). Galilean Critiques of the Biblical Objection. In: Defending Copernicus and Galileo. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 280. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3201-0_4
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