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Title: Galileo's Mistake : A New Look At the Epic Confrontation Between Galileo and the Church by Wade Rowland ISBN: 1-55970-684-8 Publisher: Arcade Books Pub. Date: 16 July, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.35 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Galileo's Mistake?
Comment: In his book "Galileo's Mistake" Wade Rowland takes the reader on a philosophical adventure through the murky waters of faith and reason. Attempting to reconstruct the emotional and metaphysical setting of the trial of Galileo (and not just the legal/historical), Rowland reveals a tale not often told in the annals of science... Galileo, the ardent realist, was also a good Catholic.
In addition to this admission, Rowland weaves in his own intellectual journey while researching Galileo's life and trial to arrive at some very anti-scientistic conclusions concerning the nature of reality. In all, this history of science tome is both enlightening and fun to read. It also challenges our modern view of science as salvation and forces even the most ardent of realists to consider the possibility of a reality beyond the reach of mathematics.
Rating: 5
Summary: A brilliant must-read
Comment: Galileo's Mistake is a wonderful blend of biography, history, science, and philosophy that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. Wade Rowland takes you back to one of the most important turning points in the evolution of Western culture, the trial of Galileo by the Inquisition.
In today's increasingly anti-religious social milieu, Rowland has the chutzpah to challenge conventional thought on the Galileo Affair, arguing that perhaps there was more to the conflict between Galileo and the Church than the Copernican theory. His brilliant book is a valuable contribution to the continuing debate on the relationship between science and religion, and one I would highly recommend to anyone interested in the subject matter, regardless of what your position might
be. A highly enjoyable-and stimulating-read!
Rating: 3
Summary: Is Galileo the center of the universe?
Comment: Wade Rowland, author of Galileo's Mistake, certainly doesn't have much faith in conventional wisdom.
Most people were taught that the conflict between Galileo Galilei and the Vatican was the last gasp of the Age of Faith before it gave way to the Age of Reason -- a view seemingly supported by the church itself, which in 1992 officially admitted it had wronged Galileo. But it is Mr. Rowland's contention that the venerable mathematician and astronomer was not a casualty of a revengeful and backward church but instead a victim of historical circumstances and his own lack of tact.
Mr. Rowland notes, for example, that the church never bothered Nicolaus Copernicus, who proved mathematically that the earth rotated around the sun more than 20 years before Galileo was even born and nearly a century before Galileo's famous summons to Rome.
The difference, of course, is that between what Copernicus said in 1543 and what Galileo was told in 1632, Rome experienced the full brunt of the protestant reformation and responded with its own counter-reformation: the Holy See could no longer afford dissent that that kind. Those are the historical circumstances.
Galileo's lack of tact, his "mistake" as Mr. Rowland puts it, is more complicated. While Copernicus presented his views in the Latin "De Revolutionibus," Galileo made his mark with "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany" which was written in Italian, a vulgar street language at the time. More importantly, where Copernicus released his proofs on his deathbed and to a largely academic community, a Galileo just past middle age touted to a wider audience that his proof showed that the scientific method was clearly superior to the Bible as a way to understand the universe. And lastly, while the church warned Galileo to stop his promotion of the scientific method in 1616, Galileo came back to it just 16 years later when he published "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems," where he ostensibly explained both sides of the heliocentric-geocentric debate but made no mistake about which side made most sense in his mind. The Vatican, Mr. Rowland states, had no option but to call Galileo to Rome.
It is when it describes the circumstances Galileo's trial rather than the circumstances of the theological debate that this book is most interesting. Like the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial or the case against Rosa Parks in 1955, Galileo's trial was about rules being broken and not about whether the rules were right or wrong. In that light, Mr. Rowland writes that a narcissistic Galileo was clearly guilty of breaking the rules set out by an embattled and desperate church -- a church that showed its leniency by placing Galileo under house arrest rather than burning him at the stake as was common at the time.
To make his points, Mr. Rowland uses fictionalized dialogue and he creates situations where he takes certain liberties to fill in the gaps between what is known as fact, and for its part, the writing flows easily (revealing Mr. Rowland's journalistic background). But for all that, Galileo's Mistake remains a thought provoking and interesting but ultimately unpersuasive book. The traditional view of Galileo's trial is surely not without fault, but the evidence that it is almost completely wrong seems too flimsy to believe, even after 300 pages of explanations ... no matter how interesting they might be.
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Title: Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius by William R. Shea, Mariano Artigas ISBN: 0195165985 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages by Richard E. Rubenstein ISBN: 0151007209 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 15 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: Isaac Newton by JAMES GLEICK ISBN: 0375422331 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Pendulum : Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science by Amir D. Aczel ISBN: 0743464788 Publisher: Atria Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Scientists : A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors by JOHN GRIBBIN ISBN: 1400060133 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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