Quote:You guys oughta read Galileo's Daughter.Thanks for the recommendation!
Quote:I read half of it about two years ago. What I remember is that there were two factions within the Vatican and Italian priesthood. One faction was very open to discussion of ideas, including many scientific ideas, and this faction held the power while Galileo developed his work. However, the other faction came to power, and they were very dogmatic and traditional and felt that Truth was in the Bible and not in dots in the sky.No doubt. When in Florence, visiting the lovely museums there, I was downright flabbergasted by the importance of science to the Medici. The maps, the scientific instruments, the calculations, the treatises... this was very clearly a progressive endeavour of incredible relevance. While not all the Popes were from the Medici, it seems inconceivable that such a society would fail to produce a pro-science faction, even inside the church. As much as the term has fallen into academic disrepute, they called it the Renaissance for a reason.
Quote:So I think both of you are inaccurate. You're inaccurate in talking about the Catholic leadership as if it were a homogeneous entity.The difficulty is, my point is solid even if you grant that the Church was wildly heterogeneous, which is certainly true. An organization (or even a single Pope, as here) that occasionally allows science, and occasionally suppresses it, might be capricious, confused, or (generously) just changeable, but it is still an organization that suppresses science. The existential "there exists a case where the church suppressed science" is demonstrated, and the universal "it is never the case that the church suppresses science" is falsified.
Quote:Back to the book. G himself was a religious man, and did not want to go against God or his Church. He wasn't thumbing his nose at anybody. The fact that he wasn't given a more severe punishment speaks more about his faith and obedience than it does about any theoretical lenience of his oppressors.In fairness, you don't write characters like Simplicio unless you're thumbing your nose at somebody. He had a rebellious streak in him somewhere, something I appreciate, even if the Church didn't.
-Jester