Galileo: A Very Short Introduction PDF
Preview Galileo: A Very Short Introduction
Galileo: A Very Short Introduction Very Short Introductions are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide. The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. Over the next few years it will grow to a library of around 200 volumes – a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology. Very Short Introductions available now: ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Continental Philosophy Julia Annas Simon Critchley THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE COSMOLOGY Peter Coles John Blair CRYPTOGRAPHY ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia Fred Piper and Sean Murphy ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn DADA AND SURREALISM ARCHITECTURE David Hopkins Andrew Ballantyne Darwin Jonathan Howard ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes Democracy Bernard Crick ART HISTORY Dana Arnold DESCARTES Tom Sorell ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland DRUGS Leslie Iversen THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH Martin Redfern ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY Atheism Julian Baggini Geraldine Pinch Augustine Henry Chadwick EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BARTHES Jonathan Culler BRITAIN Paul Langford THE BIBLE John Riches THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball BRITISH POLITICS EMOTION Dylan Evans Anthony Wright EMPIRE Stephen Howe Buddha Michael Carrithers ENGELS Terrell Carver BUDDHISM Damien Keown Ethics Simon Blackburn CAPITALISM James Fulcher The European Union THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe John Pinder CHOICE THEORY EVOLUTION Michael Allingham Brian and Deborah Charlesworth CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson FASCISM Kevin Passmore CLASSICS Mary Beard and THE FRENCH REVOLUTION John Henderson William Doyle CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard Freud Anthony Storr THE COLD WAR Galileo Stillman Drake Robert McMahon Gandhi Bhikhu Parekh GLOBALIZATION PLATO Julia Annas Manfred Steger POLITICS Kenneth Minogue HEGEL Peter Singer POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood David Miller HINDUISM Kim Knott POSTCOLONIALISM HISTORY John H. Arnold Robert Young HOBBES Richard Tuck POSTMODERNISM HUME A. J. Ayer Christopher Butler IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden POSTSTRUCTURALISM Indian Philosophy Catherine Belsey Sue Hamilton PREHISTORY Chris Gosden Intelligence Ian J. Deary PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY ISLAM Malise Ruthven Catherine Osborne JUDAISM Norman Solomon Psychology Gillian Butler and Jung Anthony Stevens Freda McManus KANT Roger Scruton QUANTUM THEORY KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner John Polkinghorne THE KORAN Michael Cook ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler LITERARY THEORY RUSSELL A. C. Grayling Jonathan Culler RUSSIAN LITERATURE LOCKE John Dunn Catriona Kelly LOGIC Graham Priest THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner S. A. Smith MARX Peter Singer SCHIZOPHRENIA MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone MEDIEVAL BRITAIN SCHOPENHAUER John Gillingham and Christopher Janaway Ralph A. Griffiths SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer MODERN IRELAND SOCIAL AND CULTURAL Senia Pasˇeta ANTHROPOLOGY MOLECULES Philip Ball John Monaghan and Peter Just MUSIC Nicholas Cook SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner Socrates C. C. W. Taylor NINETEENTH-CENTURY SPINOZA Roger Scruton BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and STUART BRITAIN John Morrill H. C. G. Matthew TERRORISM Charles Townshend NORTHERN IRELAND THEOLOGY David F. Ford Marc Mulholland THE TUDORS John Guy paul E. P. Sanders TWENTIETH-CENTURY Philosophy Edward Craig BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Wittgenstein A. C. Grayling Samir Okasha WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman Available soon: AFRICAN HISTORY HIEROGLYPHS John Parker and Richard Rathbone Penelope Wilson ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw HIROSHIMA B. R. Tomlinson THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea HUMAN EVOLUTION BUDDHIST ETHICS Bernard Wood Damien Keown INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS CHAOS Leonard Smith Paul Wilkinson CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead JAZZ Brian Morton CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy MANDELA Tom Lodge CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE MEDICAL ETHICS Robert Tavernor Tony Hope CLONING Arlene Judith Klotzko THE MIND Martin Davies CONTEMPORARY ART Myth Robert Segal Julian Stallabrass NATIONALISM Steven Grosby THE CRUSADES PERCEPTION Richard Gregory Christopher Tyerman PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Derrida Simon Glendinning Jack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot DESIGN John Heskett PHOTOGRAPHY Dinosaurs David Norman Steve Edwards DREAMING J. Allan Hobson THE RAJ Denis Judd ECONOMICS Partha Dasgupta THE RENAISSANCE THE END OF THE WORLD Jerry Brotton Bill McGuire RENAISSANCE ART EXISTENTIALISM Thomas Flynn Geraldine Johnson THE FIRST WORLD WAR SARTRE Christina Howells Michael Howard THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR FREE WILL Thomas Pink Helen Graham FUNDAMENTALISM TRAGEDY Adrian Poole Malise Ruthven THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Habermas Gordon Finlayson Martin Conway For more information visit our web site www.oup.co.uk/vsi Stillman Drake Galileo A Very Short Introduction 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in OxfordNew York AucklandBangkokBuenos AiresCape TownChennai Dar es SalaamDelhiHong KongIstanbulKarachiKolkata Kuala LumpurMadridMelbourneMexico CityMumbaiNairobi São PauloShanghaiTaipeiTokyoToronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Stillman Drake 1980 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford University Press paperback 1980 Reissued 1996 First published as a Very Short Introduction 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–285456–9 357910864 Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall To the memory of Bryant S. Drake Chemical Engineer Raymond C. Brooks Pastor This page intentionally left blank Preface The silencing and punishment of Galileo toward the end of a life devoted to scientific inquiry was an event of profound significance for our cultural history. Its full understanding requires much more than an assumption of inevitable conflict between science and religion – a cliché which originated largely from the case of Galileo that it is widely used to explain. If any simple explanation existed, it would rather be in terms of the customary ruthlessness of societal authority in suppressing minority opinion, and in Galileo’s case with Aristotelianism rather than Christianity in authority. To understand the fate of Galileo requires knowledge of events throughout his whole career coupled with that sense of inevitable outcome, hidden from the actors, that authors of classical Greek tragedy gave to its spectators. Those spectators were kept posted by the chorus, whose role I must undertake to play, since in a short book it is not possible to deal in detail with more than a single theme in Galileo’s multiple activities. I have chosen as the focal point Galileo’s condemnation by the Roman Inquisition in 1633, with his biography as the background. That choice entails certain limitations. There is not room to justify statements about technicalities of Galileo’s science, even when they depart from currently received scholarly opinion; all I can do is to assure the reader that they are based on documentation more extensive than general histories of science have used.
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