Showing posts with label Galileo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Galileo. Show all posts

Retrying Galileo

http://books.google.com/books?id=IKW-4LyQeHYC&pg=PR5

In 1633, at the end of one of the most famous trials in history, the Inquisition condemned Galileo for contending that the Earth moves and that the Bible is not a scientific authority. Galileo's condemnation set off a controversy that has acquired a fascinating life of its own and that continues to this day. This absorbing book is the first to examine the entire span of the Galileo affair from his condemnation to his alleged rehabilitation by the Pope in 1992. Filled with primary sources, many translated into English for the first time, Retrying Galileo will acquaint readers with the historical facts of the trial, its aftermath and repercussions, the rich variety of reflections on it throughout history, and the main issues it raises.

Science and Religion. A Historical Introduction

Written by distinguished historians of science and religion, the thirty essays in this volume survey the relationship of Western religious traditions to science from the beginning of the Christian era to the late twentieth century. This wide-ranging collection also introduces a variety of approaches to understanding their intersection, suggesting a model not of inalterable conflict, but of complex interaction.

Tracing the rise of science from its birth in the medieval West through the scientific revolution, the contributors describe major shifts that were marked by discoveries such as those of Copernicus, Galileo, and Isaac Newton and the Catholic and Protestant reactions to them. They assess changes in scientific understanding brought about by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transformations in geology, cosmology, and biology, together with the responses of both mainstream religious groups and such newer movements as evangelicalism and fundamentalism. The book also treats the theological implications of contemporary science and evaluates recent approaches such as environmentalism, gender studies, social construction, and postmodernism, which are at the center of current debates in the historiography, understanding, and application of science.




Editor: Gary Ferngren.

Contributors: Colin A. Russell, David B. Wilson, Edward Grant, David C. Lindberg, Alnoor Dhanani, Owen Gingerich, Richard J. Blackwell, Edward B. Davis, Michael P. Winship, John Henry, Margaret J. Osler, Richard S. Westfall, John Hedley Brooke, Nicolaas A. Rupke, Peter M. Hess, James Moore, Peter J. Bowler, Ronald L. Numbers, Steven J. Harris, Mark A. Noll, Edward J. Larson, Richard Olson, Craig Sean McConnell, Robin Collins, William A. Dembski, David N. Livingstone, Sara Miles, and Stephen P. Weldon.

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

If we want nonscientists and opinion-makers in the press, the lab, and the pulpit to take a fresh look at the relationship between science and religion, Ronald Numbers suggests that we must first dispense with the hoary myths that have masqueraded too long as historical truths. 

Until about the 1970s, the dominant narrative in the history of science had long been that of science triumphant, and science at war with religion. But a new generation of historians both of science and of the church began to examine episodes in the history of science and religion through the values and knowledge of the actors themselves. Now Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to puncture the myths, from Galileo’s incarceration to Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Einstein’s belief in a personal God who “didn’t play dice with the universe.” The picture of science and religion at each other’s throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths.

Galileo Observed: Science and the Politics of Belief


For centuries historians, scientists, journalists, and playwrights have speculated —sometimes wildly— about Galileo's infamous encounter with the Roman Catholic Church. In their compelling critique of these efforts, Shea and Artigas draw on old and new evidence to try to set the record straight, regardless of whose toes they might be stepping on.

Galileo in Rome

Galileo's trial by the Inquisition is one of the most dramatic incidents in the history of science and religion. Today, we tend to see this event in black and white--Galileo all white, the Church all black. Galileo in Rome presents a much more nuanced account of Galileo's relationship with Rome.

The book offers a fascinating account of the six trips Galileo made to Rome, from his first visit at age 23, as an unemployed mathematician, to his final fateful journey to face the Inquisition.

The authors reveal why the theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun, set forth in Galileo's Dialogue, stirred a hornet's nest of theological issues, and they argue that, despite these issues, the Church might have accepted Copernicus if there had been solid proof.

More interesting, they show how Galileo dug his own grave. To get the imprimatur, he brought political pressure to bear on the Roman Censor. He disobeyed a Church order not to teach the heliocentric theory. And he had a character named Simplicio (which in Italian sounds like simpleton) raise the same objections to heliocentrism that the Pope had raised with Galileo.

The authors show that throughout the trial, until the final sentence and abjuration, the Church treated Galileo with great deference, and once he was declared guilty commuted his sentence to house arrest. Here then is a unique look at the life of Galileo as well as a strikingly different view of an event that has come to epitomize the Church's supposed antagonism toward science.

William R. Shea, Mariano Artigas

Negotiating Darwin: the Vatican confronts evolution

Drawing on primary sources made available to scholars only after the archives of the Holy Office were unsealed in 1998, Negotiating Darwin chronicles how the Vatican reacted when six Catholics-five clerics and one layman-tried to integrate evolution and Christianity in the decades following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species.

As Mariano Artigas, Thomas F. Glick, and Rafael A. Martínez reconstruct these cases, we see who acted and why, how the events unfolded, and how decisions were put into practice. With the long shadow of Galileo's condemnation hanging over the Church as the Scientific Revolution ushered in new paradigms, the Church found it prudent to avoid publicly and directly condemning Darwinism and thus treated these cases carefully.

The authors reveal the ideological and operational stance of the Vatican and describe its secret deliberations. In the process, they provide insight into current debates on evolution and religious belief.

The Galileo affair, does it still matter?

The Galileo affair has been extensively used as a "war" case between Science and Religion. It is known that the first effect of war, whether real or imaginary, is to obscure the truth, since the subject becomes highly controversial and the necessary historical accuracy is often ignored. I have tried to approach this issue from scratch, without any previous judgment, reading directly from the historical sources. My conclusions are then in line with the standard beliefs about the case, but with some divergences which I will discuss in my lecture, dealing both with the personal and the epistemological aspects of the controversy, as well as with its consequences on the development of Science.

Ignacio Sols

Marco Bersanelli

Marco Bersanelli is Full Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Director of the PhD School in Physics at the University of Milan, where he does research in observational cosmology. He has participated in a number of experiments in cosmology, including two expeditions to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. He is one of the leading scientists of the Planck space mission, the European Space Agency project studying the early universe, successfully launched in 2009. In addition to numerous science papers, he published scientific and interdisciplinary essays and books, including From Galileo to Gell-Mann (Templeton Press, 2009) about the human adventure of scientific research. He serves as Science Director of Euresis, a scientific association promoting science as an expression of the broader quest for beauty and meaning.

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