Abstract
The chronology sketched and described in the last chapter now needs to be interpreted more systematically and evaluated more explicitly. As suggested earlier, our plan is to interpret the subsequent Galileo affair as a controversy about whether or not the Inquisition’s condemnation of Galileo in 1633 was right. And by analogy to the Copernican controversy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Galileo-affair controversy will be analyzed in terms of the arguments and objections on both sides: arguments in favor of the Inquisition’s condemnation, which is to say against Galileo; and argument against the condemnation, which is to say in favor of Galileo. Now, the most fundamental of these issues raises the question that, regardless of whether Galileo was substantively or factually right in the beliefs he held, his supporting reasons or justifying arguments may not have been, and in any case must be assessed differently and separately. We begin in this chapter with this issue.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This last question is not as far-fetched as it might seem, for it was asked and answered affirmatively by Olivieri (1840, 57-65), who was the Inquisition’s commissary during the Settele affair. See also the reconstruction of Ingoli’s argument in Section 4.3 and the summary of Olivieri’s position in Section 8.10.
- 3.
Or perhaps, as Campanella argued, the Galilean principle is actually suggested by Scripture; see Section 4.6.
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Cf. Finocchiaro (2005b, 261) and Sections 10.5 and 12.7.
- 15.
It might not be unfair to attribute this myth to, among others, none less than Albert Einstein, who, in his otherwise enlightening Foreword to Drake’s translation of the Dialogue, says that “a man is here revealed who possesses the passionate will, the intelligence, and the courage to stand up as the representative of rational thinking against the host of those who, relying on the ignorance of the people and the indolence of teachers in priest’s and scholar’s garb, maintain and defend their positions of authority” (Einstein 1953, vii).
- 16.
This view has also been put forth by Santillana (1960, 326).
- 17.
A good example of the use of the principles of charity and of rationality is Agassi (1971).
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- 21.
Favaro 7: 368-372, Galilei (1967, 340-345).
- 22.
- 23.
For a discussion of this textual evidence, see Finocchiaro (1980, 3-26).
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This objection is made, among others, by Gingerich (1982, 133).
- 36.
These anti-Galilean critiques can be gleaned from such accounts as Carroll (1997; 1999; 2001), Koestler (1959, 434-439), Langford (1971, 69-78), McMullin (1967c, 31-35; 1998; 2005c), Moss (1983; 1986; 1993, 181-211). Note that many of them were criticized indirectly or in the notes in my earlier account (Chapter 4).
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Finocchiaro, M.A. (2010). Galileo Right for the Wrong Reasons?. 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_9
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