Talk:Galileo Galilei/Archive 5

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Early career

The "Early career" section doesn't mention what he taught at these universities. Could someone who knows this add it? Fpahl 10:18, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

O.K. Brutannica 02:51, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

New picture

So, the article lost its portrait; I assumed that this was maybe due to a lack of rights tagging, and replaced it with the Ottavio Leoni portrait since this could be used under the {{PD-art}} tag. However, I later found that the problem was that someone had trashed the Infobox_Biography template, and once I'd fixed that, either image worked fine, and the previous image, Galileo2.png, turned out to be properly rights-tagged anyway.

But in the meantime, the Leoni portrait has grown on me. I kind of like the contemporary painting of the younger Galileo over the later engraving we had been using. What are other people's preferences?

(above posted by not signed by User:Shimmin)

The Infobox_Biography template was not "trashed". It was changed, and all articles except this one were adjusted as a result. This page was protected until today, and could not be fixed. Please watch your words, and check your facts. -- Netoholic @ 18:52, 2004 Sep 26 (UTC)

I personally prefer another one, with Galilei looking slightly up. It's painted by Justus Sustermans. If not that, then the Leoni portrait. Brutannica 02:51, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I know the one you're talking about; it's a great portrait. If you can find a hi-res version of it, feel free to replace and/or supplement the Leoni protrait with it. Shimmin 12:31, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

I couldn't do that... I know nothing of picture-posting policy, or I would be scouring the Internet for maps and pictures to brighten some of these articles. Brutannica 05:24, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I found a few. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Adraeus 04:28, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The colored Susterman portrait of Galilei looking upward is a 19th century copy. [8] Adraeus 04:28, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Some videos... [9] Adraeus 04:28, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sentence of condemnation of Galileo

The following was found at the referenced site. [10] I think this is the full sentence. [11] And many more interesting documents... [12]

---

The formal condemnation of the Inquisition Tribunal was read to Galileo (1564-1642) in Rome on June 22, 1633:

"We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the said Galileo, by reason of the matters adduced in trial, and by you confessed as above, have rendered yourself in the judgment of this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine—which is false and contrary to the Sacred and divine Scriptures—that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west; and that an opinion may be held and defended as probable after it has been declared and defined to be contrary to the Holy Scripture; and that consequently you have incurred all the censures and penalties imposed and promulgated in the sacred canons and other constitutions, general and particular, against such delinquents. From which we are content that you be absolved, provided that you first, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, in our presence you abjure, curse and detest before us the aforesaid errors and heresies, and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Church in the form to be prescribed by us for you. And, in order that this your grave and pernicious error and transgression may not remain altogether unpunished and that you may be more cautious in the future and an example to others that they may abstain from delinquencies of this sort, we ordain that the book of the Dialogues of Galileo be prohibited by public edict. We condemn you to the formal prison of this Holy Office during our pleasure, and by way of salutary penance we enjoin that for three years to come you repeat once a week the seven penitential Psalms. Reserving to ourselves liberty to moderate, commute or take off, in whole or in part, the aforesaid penalties and penance."

---

Adraeus 04:30, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Request for more references and better organization

Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information.

In this case there is one citation in footnote format and several inline citations. Can someone track down the full citation information for those and collect all the references in a ==References== section? Thank you, and please leave me a message when you have added a few references to the article. - Taxman 17:41, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Evidence

I changed the following recently changed sentence

Galileo did everything the church requested him to do, following (so far as most people can tell) the plea bargain of two months earlier.

which previously had said "we" can tell. I really don't understand the "most people". Does the author of the change have access to some special information that disproves what most people can discern? If so, please share.

So I've made the phrasing more direct: there is evidence to this effect, and that's what we have. If there is any other, it will be good to hear about it. Dandrake 22:00, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Church controversy: new changes.

Anybody interested in review of this large change? It's highly POV, of course, and details like an encomium to Bellarmine's theological status can easily be edited, as can serious inaccuracies, such as the mention of tidal theory in conjunction with the events of 1616. But of course there's more to it than that. Left to myself, I'd probably judge a simple reversion to be better than leaving it in, but maybe we can do something still better. And the anonymous editor might decide to participate rather than making one edit to Wikipedia and disappearing forever. (see [13] ) Dandrake 20:37, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Very well -- alone! I'm beginning to clean up this very large drive-by edit (check the editor's contrib list, indexed above). As a preliminary, cleaning up the prologue, which has been inaccurate for years: no one has presented a shred of evidence that Tycho was already replacing Ptolemy among the Jesuit astronomers by the time Galileo started drawing fire. It's often asserted, but never supported. Surely Clavius never advocated Tycho. Fantoli says, in a book translated by a Jesuit, that the change came later, when (and because) Galileo got in trouble. --Dandrake 00:46, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

The article has a Huxley quote that has become rather popular:

Even Thomas Huxley, the man who invented the term agnostic and whose nickname was "Darwin's bulldog", said of the Galileo affair, "The Church had the best of it." [1]

This is cited in various places on the Web, always without a reference to the source. Typically, the passage above has a link—to a secondary source without context. It almost makes you think that people who write on the Web don't understand what a source is.

Can anyone provide a genuine reference for the Huxley quote? I've already asked in soc.history.science, but I'm not confident that anything will come up in that completely degenerate newsgroup. If no one can identify it, then it will have to be removed because it's impossible to determine what was meant in context, or even whether the quote is genuine. --Dandrake 06:22, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

The article also asserts,

Bellarmine himself had had some of his own work placed on the index.

I can't readily find a source for this. The Wikipedia article on Bellarmine seems to say nothing about it; it does not contain the word index or ban; did I miss something? Google finds me http://www.enjoyinggodministries.com/article.asp?id=337 which says only that Sixtus V threatened to put the writings on the Index. In this and the above matter, the assertion will be struck if no one can defend it. --Dandrake 00:15, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Removed the Huxley quote since nobody can find where it came from or what its context might have been. Likewise, the claim that Bellarmine got on the Index. Dandrake 19:22, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Nobody has ever come up with a source for the Huxley quote -- surprise! -- but I ran across this other opinion of Huxley's, likening the churchmen who suppressed Galileo's work to "Canutes of the hour enthroned in solemn state, bidding the great wave to stay." Reaction to Darwin's theory Doesn't belong in the article text, but it illustrates a most interesting concept of getting the better of it, don't you think?

Much of the long justification of Bellarmine's position has been replaced with a consideration of Bellarmine's significance to the case. Material concerning that worthy's thoughts on science and theology would be a very useful addition to the article on Bellarmine, and I hope someone with a better knowledge of the subject puts it there. Oh, and of course, the inaccuracies should be fixed before that's done; I'd be glad to help. --Dandrake 20:28, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

JoshuaZ: you reverted my edit from yesterday on NPOV grounds. I feel this may have been a little hasty? I was trying to make readers aware of the wider context of the controversy; I haven't particularly got an axe to grind. The 30 years war that was decimating Europe just then is not mentioned anywhere in the section for example. It seems to me very likely, and worth drawing to people's attention, that Reformation politics may have had at least some relevance to Galileo's trial. In any case, there is certainly some extra complexity there that the article as it stands does not even allude to. Because there is no hook anywhere in the article as it stands, and because the new ideas need more than one sentence to summarise them adequately, I introduced a new paragraph. If I try again, with more effort to achieve NPOV, will you agree not to revert, at least not immediately? You comment that the contribution seems to be very minority, but Redondi's book was very influential in Italy (and also was very scholarly), there is new supporting material, and at least the Rice Galileo Project (which is one of the cited external links) treats it seriously. On the extra Scripture references, the whole point was that the trial revolved on the meaning of Scripture, so to double the number of references to Scripture seems relevant to me (as is the fact that multiple interpretations were available even then, although I suppose Kepler's opinions - being a Protestant - may not be relevant?). C.jeynes 01:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I am not sure why the paragraph has a NPOV problem. It summarizes published material that gives additional context for the trial. If it is too much detail for this article, then maybe it could be moved to Galileo affair. JoshuaZ, can you explain the NPOV problem? Roger 05:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The NPOV concern is that the opinion isn't (as far as I am aware) that common an opinion and so seems to have an undue weight problem putting it in this article. I would have less (or no) issue to put some form of it in Galileo affair which goes into more detail on the subject and so can more reasonably have such minority opinions. JoshuaZ 06:14, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough C.jeynes 10:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Galileo Galilei and Neptune

What year did Galileo observe Neptune? The entry for Neptune (planet) says: "Galileo's astronomical drawings show that he had first observed Neptune on December 28, 1612, and again on January 27, 1613; on both occasions Galileo mistook Neptune for a fixed star when it appeared very close (in conjunction) to Jupiter in the night sky" but the entry for Galileo Galilei says: "Galileo observed the planet Neptune in 1611, but took no particular notice of it; it appears in his notebooks as one of many unremarkable dim stars." -- Mark Mathu July 30, 2005

Cultural imperialism

Please, before anyone else makes attempts to "standardize" (oops, did you mean standardise?) spelling, read http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English and note that this particular article has (a) no particular connection to British subject matter (b) American-standard spellings since long long ago.

It's a well-considered policy. It has the extra benefit of providing incentive to contribute new articles, in which process one can determine the style that will apply to the article from then on. --Dandrake 23:50, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

Core of Galileo's Church Controversy

I've proposed additional thoughts in the opening paragraph to this section with the intention of clarifying the foundations of the Galileo-Catholic battle.

At its core, this battle originated from the Catholic orthodox leaders taking a literalist viewpoint of the Bible, versus a more symbolic or metaphysical point of view. The new thoughts have been added without being judgmental about either POV -- literalist/orthodox or symbolic/metaphysical.

A reference for metaphysical interpretation of the Bible has been added.

Added a link to the Catholic Encyclopedia

I just added a link to the Catholic Encyclopedia. The material there is excellent and should be a must-read for anyone interested in the Galileo Affair.

The new link entry reads:

Galielo Galilei, in the Catholic Encyclopedia found online on New Advent, an orthodox Catholic website

God bless!

Manny Amador 11:17, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Two recent drive-bys

The assessment of the Leaning Tower story keeps shifting. The claim that it is generally considered false is stronger than the claim that it is not generally accepted as true. If you want that text, give some justification for it, such as to be persuasive. You will not find it easy. Till then, it reverts.

Does techne look for the causes of ALL things? And if Aristotle said so, are we sure that his "all things" meant just what a modern reader would mean? Discuss.

Dandrake 00:37, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Galileo's Fallacies

I added the section about his poor science and false claims. I added sources directly from Galileo's works, references to his knowledge of how relative motion actually worked, his incessant desire to prove Copernicus right, even though he was a novice on the subject compared to Brahe and Kepler, and a proper account for his intentional misleading in his Theory on the Tides, so if anyone takes it this section down, I would like to see come evidence to support that decision. Thanks --JHMM13 16:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Your section is extremely POV in its flat assertions of which very few are generally accepted. If you used soureces, how about some references? With some amount of work we can perhaps edit it into a shape that will Teach the Controversy. Dandrake 01:01, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone give us an actual source for the quote in which Galileo tells "Sarsi" that he discovered all the new things in the sky? What we have now is a reference to a secondary source called Zinner, without any bibliographic data on the latter. If no one can tell us where in Il Saggiatore the quote appears, then there is no telling what the sentence meant in context.

By the way, I just finished going through The Assayer (in English translation) and failed to find any such assertion. Granted, I find that whole comet controversy awfully tedious and did no more than scan the entire 185 pages rather quickly. Perhaps I have overlooked something obvious; it wouldn't be the first time that has happened. If so, the data will be easy to supply. If there is no proper traceable citation, however, then the piece of text is useless in supporting any claim about Galileo's behavior. Dandrake 05:41, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

The bit about Galileo's deliberately faking his theory of the tides, because he had a perfect understanding of inertia, would surprise a lot of historians of science, like Koyré, who argued that his knowledge of inertia was vague and inaccurate, with ideas of some kind of "circular inertia" persisting throughout his career. You cannot both be right; the converse, however, is possible. Dandrake 07:33, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed the following text, pending confirmation of the quote:

You cannot help it, Mr. Sarsi, that it was granted to me alone to discover all the new phenomena in the sky and nothing to anybody else. This is the truth which neither malice nor envy can suppress:: (Il Saggiatore quoted by Zinner, p. 362)

The passage appears many times on the Internet, but never with a genuine citation. Those few which give any kind of attribution invariably give one of 2 secondary sources. This is useless for finding the context of the passage; it does not even allow one to be sure that the passage is in the Assayer and not some other place (or that the text has not at some point been mangled and then taken seriously by writers borrowing from each other, a practice all too common in what is supposed to be scholarship). Someone with access to Zinner might look up his citation, which will give the precise source, if his book is a scholarly work worthy to be cited in its turn.

Just below the cursor as I write this, there's the Wikipedia boilerplate about verifiable sources. We need one for this passage. (It would help if anyone could even tell us where "Sarsi" challenged Galileo's priority for his observations, since the passage obviously would be in reply to such a challenge. All I can find is his slighting of Galileo's contribution to the telescope, to which Galileo replied with asperity but without any such outlandish claim as above.) Dandrake 02:58, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I have removed the following paragraph pending clarification:

In his Dialogues, Galileo often stated arguments through the use of one of his characters, Salviati, that severely put down his opponent's positions without proving his own, a common argumentative tactic of Galileo's when it came to Copernicanism, considering Copernicanism was mired with eccessive epicycles and faults, so it had no conclusive evidence.

I don't understand why rebutting another scientist's error is a fallacy when one fails to provide a satisfactory alternative at the same time. An alternative is nice; I'm sure that the person who exposed the error in the 19th-century proof of the four-color theorem would have quite delighted to announce a workable alternate proof; but it's not mandatory. Perhaps a little expansion of the claim, particularly with examples of the misbehavior, would produce something that at least could be discussed. As it is, to use the fine scientific phrase, it's not even wrong. Dandrake 22:37, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I am removing the whole section "Modern claims of scientific errors and misconduct." In brief, I'm removing it for a general lack of NPOV and citation.

The breakdown:

Although Galileo is generally considered one of the first modern scientists, as evidenced by his position in the sunspot controversy, he is often said to have arrogantly considered himself to be the sole proprietor of the discoveries in astronomy.

He said that he discovered the "Copernican" system of astronomy? Removed because it cites no sources, and really needs one if it's true.

Furthermore, he never accepted Kepler's elliptical orbits for the planets, holding to the circular orbits of Copernicus, which still employed epicycles to account for irregularities in planetary motions. (The circle was considered the "perfect" shape.) For this reason, Galileo's "heliocentric" theory is incorrect, since there is, by definition, no geometric "center" to an elliptical orbit. (Nor, strictly speaking, do planets move in elliptical orbits; as they gravitationally interact with one another, they constantly change paths.)

I added a small blurb on Galileo and Kepler, pretty much just a copy of what I took out. The part about "Galileo's heliocentric theory" being incorrect is rather obsurd. The "heliocentric" theory is regarded as fact by the scientific community, laymen at large, and Wikipedia's own entry on Heliocentrism. It is true that there is no exact center of an orbit (especially one in which the points of the elipse change over time), but the gist of the theory is that the planets are orbiting *around* the sun. Scientists still refer to it all as "Copernican astronomy," though the details of the theory have all changed.

Galileo attributed tides to momentum, despite his great knowledge of the ideas of relative motion and Kepler's better theories using the Moon as the cause. (Neither of these great scientists, however, had a workable physical theory of tides; this had to wait for the work of Newton.) Galileo stated in his Dialogue that, if the Earth spins on its axis and is traveling at a certain speed around the Sun, parts of the Earth must travel "faster" at night and "slower" during the day. This is true in the Sun's frame of reference; but it is by no means adequate to explain the tides.

I chopped this up. It is worth mentioning the theory of the tides, but this paragraph is very condescending, without a source other than the writer's. Without Newton's work with gravity and physics, using the moon to explain the tides is only a little better than using some vague motion of earth's rotation. Kaktrot

Catholic bias to article

I find the point of view taken on the section entitled "Church controversy" absurd. It is ridiculous to suggest that the church in any way was justified in prosecuting Galileo. My claim that the article has a Catholic slant is buttressed by the fact that the author has included the ludicrous opinion of Cardinal Ratzinger which suggests that Galileo received a fair trial. Equally, suggestive of a bias towards the position of the church is the disparaging remark about Bertholt Brecht.

I understand that that is how the church saw that matter at the time. But the fundamental question for the authors of the Wikipedia article is: is the article written from a 21st century point of view, in which we may expect to be critical of the church's position, or are the authors trying to justify the church's 17th century dogmatic stance?

I would like to see the section in question labelled as not neutral.

Please sign your messages. Galileo was not only given a fair trial based on the terms of the law, but, after committing perjury on the first day of the trial (April 12) that his Dialogues did nothing but refute Copernicanism, he was given a second relatively simple slap on the wrist. He was verbally threatened with torture (a threat that carried no sway and was considered a formality when no torture equipment was in the room like in Galileo's trial), and after four times repeating that, since Cardinal Bellarmine's 1616 edict, he had never held the Copernican point of view, which was an absolute lie. Everyone knew it was a lie too, but they didn't want to really punish him, they just wanted to hurt his overlarge ego and let everyone else know that even Galileo falls under the power of the Roman Catholic Church. It is the opinion of many Galileo biographers and historians such as Arthur Koestler that Galileo was given a very fair trial that slanted in his favor if anything, based on the laws of the time. --JHMM13 07:23, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

May I point out that we are living in the 21st century, and that the definition of "fair" trail is not relative. The point still remains that Galilei was persecuted for his scientific beliefs, and that any enlightened person living today should consider this regretable, to say the least. If you insist on judging Galilei, as his persecutors did, from the point of view of Christian orthodoxy, then I cannot consider you as impartial.

I repeat that I do not consider this section as neutral, and belive that it should be labelled as such.

Here's a belated and fractional answer to both of the previous posters. And may I join in urging everyone to attach an identification to remarks posted here? Put a block of four tilde (~) characters at the end, and the software will replace it with identity and date. If at all possible, register a user name; it really takes almost no time and is extremely non-intrusive; more on this if you have any qualms.

First, then, it's necessary to consider the Neutral Point Of View (NPOV) rule which is supposed to guide Wikipedia. [removed rhetoric that I now think too inflammatory] Points of view that one does not like (even things that one may consider pernicious nonsense) are to be represented if in fact they are held by some parties to a controversy. It is a painful rule to work with, but Wikipedia could not survive wihtout it. What is not allowable is to represent them as Fact. "It was a proper trial" is BS. Sorry, I mean POV. "Cardinal Ratzinger said it was proper" is true.

Ratzinger's opinion could be cut out of the article at any moment -- you could do it yourself -- but the change would probably be reverted right away, on the claim that one point of view was being forced on the article. And I'd support those claims, because Ratzinger's expertise in Catholic theology and canon law make him extremely well qualified to represent the views of Church people (though not all of them) on the controversy. What's needed is for other views to be expressed clearly, so that the reader knows what the issues are and can maybe make a judgment. The alternative is to start one's own encyclopedia and make sure it gets thing right, and don't think that idea isn't appealing. But reality intervenes.

It's very important not to think in terms of "the author of the article" in dealing with Wikipedia. There is no one author, particularly for an old article on a controversial subject. Please go the history page for the Galileo article and look at the number of revisions by different people. Go back and click on the date of some ancient revision, and look at what the text used to be. This is the work of many people, and they do not agree with each other! In fact, the church controversy section is pretty awful in my opinion -- I quite agree with you there. It is rambling and incoherent and self-contradictory and unscholarly, the work of people with different opinions cramming their stuff in and adding whatever tidbit they read the other day, with no real effort (as sometimes miraculously happens in some articles) to reach agreement on a presentation.

Please try to read the article as if you were a stout defender of everything the Church did. I am sure you would find it biased in just the opposite direction. Look at all the text from A. D. White; sure, there are disclaimers about his claimed prejudices, but his rhetoric is all there anyway.

If the text does not adequately present the case for Ratzinger's having been wrong, the best thing to do is to improve the text in that direction.

On the matter of Brecht, I agree that the present text is not good. I may be prejudiced, though, having written much of what was there last year. Personally, I think it has been mangled. Nonetheless, it's not false as to basic facts, just as to emphasis. Brecht's presentation is not even vaguely historically correct, nor was it ever intended to be. Ask any academic expert on Brecht what he was trying to do in his plays; it was not to make documentaries. Fat bishops laughing uproariously about Galileo's silly ideas? Not the reaction of the Church in actual history. (In fact, it's a bit like Martin Luther's reaction to Copernicus; but it appears that that was dinner-table conversation and not a considered theological judgment.) Galileo pretending to be the original inventor of the telescope so he could hog all the glory and the profits? Fantastic (literally) nonsense.

Hmm, so far I've responded to only the first poster, and it probably sounds hostile, because i need to clarify what goes on in Wikipedia. I try not to write postings that are even this long, because the posting mechanism is too unreliable; so I'm going to cut this one off, and in the next I'll reveal how much I really agree with poster number 1. Dandrake 06:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC) [emendations Dandrake 01:53, 5 December 2005 (UTC)]

Now, as to the substance of the complaint. If the whole affair was conducted perfectly in agreement with the Church's own rules as of the seventeenth century, that is relevant and should be in the article. It should not be presented as established and generally agreed fact, because it is not: the Church's actions have been criticized from inside the Church as well as outside it. But the question is encyclopedic and belongs in the article.

It is not, however, the end of the matter. We are indeed living in the 21st century, and we have judgments to make about scientific and religious issues, and the history of those issues is relevant. To leave it with "The Church obeyed its own contemporary rules" would be unworthy of the nineteenth century, not to mention the eighteenth.

The conception of the relation between the Church and scientific research has changed a great deal since 1633. Many people in the Church itself would agree with this; citations upon request. It would be ludicrous not to pay attention to the changing interpretations in an article on Galileo. But the article is not that ludicrous.

If you're up for a small research project, backtrack in the history section to the end of last July, and see the amount of attention devoted to Cardinal Bellarmine, without any indication that anyone today might wonder how expertise in theology would qualify someone to tell scholars what they would be allowed to believe on a question about material things, on pain of severe punishment. Note that this omission has been corrected:

• Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, one of the most respected Catholic theologians of the time, was called on to adjudicate the dispute between Galileo and his opponents, including both religious zealots and secular university professors. The appointment shows the world view that prevailed before the Scientific Revolution: a leading theologian was assigned to tell scholars what views they were allowed to "hold or defend" concerning the workings of the physical world.

I think (though again, I'm prejudiced) that that starts to put the issues in perspective. Likewise, the article points out that the official formal registered judgment of the Inquisition said nothing whatever about Galileo's supposedly violating a direct order not to teach heliocentrism (tha article also tells why they could hardly do that, since the allegation had been proved false); nor did it pay any attention to whether his claims had any scientific force, as would have been required by the wise Cardinal Bellarmine's position. Please consider whether the modern apologists fo rthe Inquisition are likely to be happy about these passages.

Also, please keep up the ciriticisms. The article always needs improvements, and it needs them severely in this section. Contribute your own text if you like; but if you prefer to discuss major changes here first, good on you. Dandrake 07:17, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Here is a small criticism. The NPOV in this article sways both ways, and the problem is that too many people hold that it was one side or the other that screwed up in the whole trial of Galileo mess. That basic tenet is the problem, because both sides did things wrong. Initially, Galileo's statements (which were more of a support of the Copernican point of view than anything else in this whole case) and observations were verified by the Vatican's astronomers and were no cause for alarm within the Holy See. Great, everyone's happy. The problems occurred when Galileo began to publicly re-interpret and question scripture. Why was this a big deal? Because he was doing this on the heels of the beginning of the Reformation, that's why. Basically, Galileo was taking something he knew well, astronomical context, and he was forcing it into a realm in which he was clearly not an expert, theology. The Church's mistake here was the overreaction of making him renounce the entire belief that they would have accepted perfectly well before had he not begun calling bishops out and publicly ridiculing the pope. It was vindictiveness, plain and simple, at that point.

As a reference for this, I give you a well researched article by George Sim Johnson, based on a comission that Pope John Paul II arranged to put a definitive storyline together for this whole mess. http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Issues/GalileoAffair.html 129.42.208.182 19:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)