Galileo's Inquisition Trial Revisited

Galileo's Inquisition Trial Revisited

Author: Jules Speller

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9783631562291

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This book shows that the known accounts of Galileo's trial leave many important facts unexplained or even clash with them. A most careful reading of the relevant documents and treatises backs an interpretation which has Pope Urban VIII sue Galileo for denying God's omnipotence or His omniscience by admitting the «absolute truth» of Copernicanism. The Pope's opinion results from an argument he fully trusts, together with his belief that Galileo failed to fulfill a condition to which the publication of the Dialogue was subjected. That the trial does not end with a conviction for Urban's awful «formal heresy» but merely for «vehement suspicion of heresy», with the «heresy» consisting in the pseudo-heretical belief in a doctrine contrary to the Bible, all this is due to the existence of a Galileo-friendly party inside the Holy Office, led by Cardinal Francesco Barberini and powerful enough to wring a compromise from the Pope.


Galileo Revisited

Galileo Revisited

Author: Dom Paschal Scotti

Publisher: Ignatius Press

Published: 2017-08-25

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1621641325

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No other work on Galileo Galilei has brought together such a complete description of the historical context in its political, cultural, philosophical, religious, scientific, and personal aspects as this volume has done. In addition to covering the whole of Galileo's life, it focuses on those things that are most pertinent to the Galileo Affair, which culminated in his condemnation by the Inquisition in 1633. It also includes an extensive discussion of the relationship between religion and science in general, and of the relationship between Christianity and science in particular, without which a true understanding of the affair is much weakened. This discussion of the relationship of Christianity with science-a long, generally positive relationship-is most timely since the case of Galileo is, as many historians and Pope Benedict XVI have stated, the beginning of the alienation of the Church from much of the intellectual culture of our present age. The "warfare between science and religion" is an old myth that should finally be retired, but for many it is still axiomatic. This work shows the significance of astrology in the history of society and the Church (Galileo was a master astrologer), and the importance of the internal tensions and factions within the Roman Curia in the seventeenth century. It also tells of the profound battles among Church leadership over the direction of the Church in a time of uncertainty and intellectual and cultural ferment. The Galileo Affair is not just of its time and place, and it is not just about Galileo, but it touches upon that perennial issue of how the Church deals with issues of adaptation and change.


The Roman Inquisition

The Roman Inquisition

Author: Thomas F. Mayer

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-03-03

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0812290321

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Few legal events loom as large in early modern history as the trial of Galileo. Frequently cast as a heroic scientist martyred to religion or as a scapegoat of papal politics, Galileo undoubtedly stood at a watershed moment in the political maneuvering of a powerful church. But to fully understand how and why Galileo came to be condemned by the papal courts—and what role he played in his own downfall—it is necessary to examine the trial within the context of inquisitorial law. With this final installment in his magisterial trilogy on the seventeenth-century Roman Inquisition, Thomas F. Mayer has provided the first comprehensive study of the legal proceedings against Galileo. By the time of the trial, the Roman Inquisition had become an extensive corporatized body with direct authority over local courts and decades of documented jurisprudence. Drawing deeply from those legal archives as well as correspondence and other printed material, Mayer has traced the legal procedure from Galileo's first precept in 1616 to his formal trial in 1633. With an astonishing mastery of the legal underpinnings and bureaucratic workings of inquisitorial law, Mayer's work compares the course of legal events to other possible outcomes within due process, showing where the trial departed from standard procedure as well as what available recourse Galileo had to shift its direction. The Roman Inquisition: Trying Galileo presents a detailed and corrective reconstruction of the actions both in the courtroom and behind the scenes that led to one of history's most notorious verdicts.


Nature Engaged

Nature Engaged

Author: M. Biagioli

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-12-10

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 023033802X

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This volume gathers essays that focus on the worldliness of science, its inseparable engagement in the major institutional bases of social life: law, market, church, school, and nation. With a chronological span reaching from the Renaissance to Big Science, its topics range from sundials to genetic sequences, from calculating instruments to devices that simulate human behavior, from early cartography to techniques for tracing radioactive fallout on a global scale. The book aims to show readers, with episodes drawn from the span of their modern history, the sciences in action throughout human society.


The Great Rift

The Great Rift

Author: Michael E. Hobart

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2018-04-16

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0674985168

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In their search for truth, contemporary religious believers and modern scientific investigators hold many values in common. But in their approaches, they express two fundamentally different conceptions of how to understand and represent the world. Michael E. Hobart looks for the origin of this difference in the work of Renaissance thinkers who invented a revolutionary mathematical system—relational numeracy. By creating meaning through numbers and abstract symbols rather than words, relational numeracy allowed inquisitive minds to vault beyond the constraints of language and explore the natural world with a fresh interpretive vision. The Great Rift is the first book to examine the religion-science divide through the history of information technology. Hobart follows numeracy as it emerged from the practical counting systems of merchants, the abstract notations of musicians, the linear perspective of artists, and the calendars and clocks of astronomers. As the technology of the alphabet and of mere counting gave way to abstract symbols, the earlier “thing-mathematics” metamorphosed into the relational mathematics of modern scientific investigation. Using these new information symbols, Galileo and his contemporaries mathematized motion and matter, separating the demonstrations of science from the linguistic logic of religious narration. Hobart locates the great rift between science and religion not in ideological disagreement but in advances in mathematics and symbolic representation that opened new windows onto nature. In so doing, he connects the cognitive breakthroughs of the past with intellectual debates ongoing in the twenty-first century.


Defending Copernicus and Galileo

Defending Copernicus and Galileo

Author: Maurice A. Finocchiaro

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-01-15

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9048132010

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Although recent works on Galileo’s trial have reached new heights of erudition, documentation, and sophistication, they often exhibit inflated complexities, neglect 400 years of historiography, or make little effort to learn from Galileo. This book strives to avoid such lacunae by judiciously comparing and contrasting the two Galileo affairs, that is, the original controversy over the earth’s motion ending with his condemnation by the Inquisition in 1633, and the subsequent controversy over the rightness of that condemnation continuing to our day. The book argues that the Copernican Revolution required that the hypothesis of the earth’s motion be not only constructively supported with new reasons and evidence, but also critically defended from numerous old and new objections. This defense in turn required not only the destructive refutation, but also the appreciative understanding of those objections in all their strength. A major Galilean accomplishment was to elaborate such a reasoned, critical, and fair-minded defense of Copernicanism. Galileo’s trial can be interpreted as a series of ecclesiastic attempts to stop him from so defending Copernicus. And an essential thread of the subsequent controversy has been the emergence of many arguments claiming that his condemnation was right, as well as defenses of Galileo from such criticisms. The book’s particular yet overarching thesis is that today the proper defense of Galileo can and should have the reasoned, critical, and fair-minded character which his own defense of Copernicus had.


Burned Alive

Burned Alive

Author: Alberto A. Martinez

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2018-06-15

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1780239408

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In 1600, the Catholic Inquisition condemned the philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno for heresy, and he was then burned alive in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome. Historians, scientists, and philosophical scholars have traditionally held that Bruno’s theological beliefs led to his execution, denying any link between his study of the nature of the universe and his trial. But in Burned Alive, Alberto A. Martínez draws on new evidence to claim that Bruno’s cosmological beliefs—that the stars are suns surrounded by planetary worlds like our own, and that the Earth moves because it has a soul—were indeed the primary factor in his condemnation. Linking Bruno’s trial to later confrontations between the Inquisition and Galileo in 1616 and 1633, Martínez shows how some of the same Inquisitors who judged Bruno challenged Galileo. In particular, one clergyman who authored the most critical reports used by the Inquisition to condemn Galileo in 1633 immediately thereafter wrote an unpublished manuscript in which he denounced Galileo and other followers of Copernicus for their beliefs about the universe: that many worlds exist and that the Earth moves because it has a soul. Challenging the accepted history of astronomy to reveal Bruno as a true innovator whose contributions to the science predate those of Galileo, this book shows that is was cosmology, not theology, that led Bruno to his death.


Galileo

Galileo

Author: J. L. Heilbron

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-07-26

Total Pages: 539

ISBN-13: 0199655987

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Heilbron takes in the landscape of culture, learning, religion, science, theology, and politics of late Renaissance Italy to produce a richer and more rounded view of Galileo, his scientific thinking, and the company he kept.


Galileo

Galileo

Author: David Wootton

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 0300170068

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“Demonstrates an awesome command of the vast Galileo literature . . . [Wootton] excels in boldly speculating about Galileo’s motives” (The New York Times Book Review). Tackling Galileo as astronomer, engineer, and author, David Wootton places him at the center of Renaissance culture. He traces Galileo through his early rebellious years; the beginnings of his scientific career constructing a “new physics”; his move to Florence seeking money, status, and greater freedom to attack intellectual orthodoxies; his trial for heresy and narrow escape from torture; and his house arrest and physical (though not intellectual) decline. Wootton also reveals much that is new—from Galileo’s premature Copernicanism to a previously unrecognized illegitimate daughter—and, controversially, rejects the long-established belief that Galileo was a good Catholic. Absolutely central to Galileo’s significance—and to science more broadly—is the telescope, the potential of which Galileo was the first to grasp. Wootton makes clear that it totally revolutionized and galvanized scientific endeavor to discover new and previously unimagined facts. Drawing extensively on Galileo’s voluminous letters, many of which were self-censored and sly, this is an original, arresting, and highly readable biography of a difficult, remarkable Renaissance genius. Selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in the Astronautics and Astronomy Category “Fascinating reading . . . With this highly adventurous portrayal of Galileo’s inner world, Wootton assures himself a high rank among the most radical recent Galileo interpreters . . . Undoubtedly Wootton makes an important contribution to Galileo scholarship.” —America magazine “Wootton’s biography . . . is engagingly written and offers fresh insights into Galileo’s intellectual development.” —Standpoint magazine


The Routledge Guidebook to Galileo's Dialogue

The Routledge Guidebook to Galileo's Dialogue

Author: Maurice A. Finocchiaro

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-31

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1136010882

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The publication in 1632 of Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican marked a crucial moment in the ‘scientific revolution’ and helped Galileo become the ‘father of modern science’. The Dialogue contains Galileo’s mature synthesis of astronomy, physics, and methodology, and a critical confirmation of Copernicus’s hypothesis of the earth’s motion. However, the book also led Galileo to stand trial with the Inquisition, in what became known as ‘the greatest scandal in Christendom’. In The Routledge Guidebook to Galileo's Dialogue, Maurice A. Finocchiaro introduces and analyzes: the intellectual background and historical context of the Copernican controversy and Inquisition trial; the key arguments and critiques that Galileo presents on both sides of the ‘dialogue’; the Dialogue’s content and significance from three special points of view: science, methodology, and rhetoric; the enduring legacy of the Dialogue and the ongoing application of its approach to other areas. This is an essential introduction for all students of science, philosophy, history, and religion wanting a useful guide to Galileo’s great classic.