Galileo

I did not specially enjoy my trip to Rome about two years ago. Years ago, I was told that Rome make whether a deep impression or a profound disappointment in the viewer, with no middle term. In my case, Rome left me indifferent. I guess I have to come back.

Around that time I recall thinking of some reflections by Popper in Conjectures and Refutations, which started with the story of Galileo. It was portrayed away, far away from the norm and the official discourse. Out of Popper's sharp and solid argumentation I can only remember scattered patches of simplistic data: a) Galileo was a believer, a deep Catholic; b) Galileo was very good friends with the Pope for all his life; c) the Catholic Church accepted Galileo's point of view as a system of representation, but not as an actual fact.

I run into a hard-covered book a couple of days back (at 4.99 pounds in Waterstones) by Wade Rowland, Galileo's mistake, which captivated my attention:

"There is a modest historical marker in Rome, outside the magnificent Villa Medici where Galileo stayed during his visits to that city, (that) sums up what might be called the authorized version of the story (...): 'It was here that Galileo was kept prisoner by the Holy Office, when he was on trial for having seen that the Earth moves and the Sun stands still'. (...) It was the Galileo scholar Maurice Finocchiaro who led me to the marker, in an article in which he asserts that since 'to condemn a person for such a reason [that is, for having discovered the truth] can only be the result of ignorance and narrow-mindedness, this is also the myth which is used to justify the incompatibility between science and religion'. For Finocchiaro and most other current historians and philosophers of science, the myth is erroneous, simplistic and misleading". (Wade Rowland, 2001).

Well, I'll let you know how it goes.

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