The Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition (Great Discoveries) [Hardcover]

Dan Hofstadter (Author)

Book Description

Series: Great Discoveries | Publication Date: May 26, 2009

A cogent portrayal of the beginnings of modern science and a turning point in the evolution of the freedom of thought.

Celebrated, controversial, condemned, Galileo Galilei is a seminal figure in the history of science. Both Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein credit him as the first modern scientist. His 1633 trial before the Holy Office of the Inquisition is the prime drama in the history of the conflict between science and religion. In Galileo’s day, Rome was the capital of a sovereign theocratic power, which in 1600 had executed Giordano Bruno on similar charges and reserved the right to torture Galileo.

Galileo was then sixty-nine years old and the most venerated scientist in Italy. Although subscribing to an anti-literalist view of the Bible, as per Saint Augustine, Galileo considered himself a believing Catholic.

Playing to his own strengths—a deep knowledge of Italy, a longstanding interest in Renaissance and Baroque lore—Dan Hofstadter explains apparent paradoxes and limns this historic moment in the widest cultural context, portraying Galileo as both humanist and scientist.

26 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hofstadter (Falling Palace: A Romance of Naples) draws upon his intimate knowledge of Italian culture, literature and art-as well as new material released from Vatican archives-for this political, scientific and psychological examination of the "first great clash of religion and science," between Galileo and Pope Urban VIII, two seminal figures who were, incredibly, once friends. The context for Galileo's 1633 trial involved political and scientific upheavals involving better technology (Galileo's major improvements on the telescope) and a 1616 Church edict against heliocentrism meant to protect the Scripture from the free interpretation of laypeople. Despite the political cost, Galileo produced a philosophic treatise on the subject, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems (originally licensed for publication by the Church) that championed the "banned hypothesis thesis" and suggested that astronomical references in scripture were metaphorical. Hofstadter tells the concise, absorbing tale of Galileo's persecution with both sides of the conflict in mind, charting with grace the genesis of the Western world's most persistent ideological divide.
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About the Author

Dan Hofstadter is the author of The Earth Moves and Falling Palace: A Romance of Naples (a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir). He has lived in Florence and Naples and speaks and reads Italian fluently. He lives in Rensselaerville, New York.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1ST edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393066509
• ISBN-13: 978-0393066500
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,277,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Discursive review of the life and times of Galileo, September 17, 2010

By 

Richard Burt (Palo Alto, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition (Great Discoveries) (Paperback)

A surprisingly small portion of this book is devoted to what the subtitle promises: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition. Much of the book could be described as the life and times of Galileo. The author, Dan Hofstadter, clearly well-versed in the culture of that era wants to share his knowledge of it with us, whether or not it's germane to Galileo and the Roman Inquisition. No doubt the author would argue that an understanding of the culture is necessary to an understanding of the Roman Inquisition, and of course, that's true. But I found the digressions too extensive. After all, I read the book to learn about Galileo and the Roman Inquisition, and I didn't find expositions about such topics as the perspective needed for creating frescoes on church domes to advance the main topic of the book, even though Hofstadter tied a slender thread to it. Such digressions in the book are too extensive, in my opinion, and I found myself alternating between "Wow, this author sure knows a lot" and "When are we going to get to the Roman Inquisition?"

The book does get around to covering the Roman Inquisition, the details of which are partly supplied by extant records and the balance of which is conjecture (clearly identified as suppositional by the author), and the book provides a good explanation of how and why Galileo came into conflict with the Church. And to be fair, I did enjoy much of the extraneous material.

This is not the typical history of science book. Nor is it a typical history book. If what you're looking for is a concise history of the Galileo and the Roman Inquisition, you may be disappointed. If you're willing to go off on side trips into the art and scientific culture of the times, you should find this book valuable.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Scattered, incomplete and disappointing, August 30, 2011

By 

Metallurgist (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition (Great Discoveries) (Hardcover)

I found this book to be a disappointment. The subtitle is Galileo and the Roman Inquisition, yet only one third of the book is actually about this subject and compared to others that I have read, I found this treatment to be largely deficient. The treatment of the many subjects covered in the book is very scattered, with many tangential digressions that, in my opinion, while interesting impaired the continuity of the book. Instead of a linear well-ordered presentation, the book rambles from subject to subject and the reader is then left to piece the story together for himself or herself. Some readers, particularly those who do not like ordered histories, may appreciate this approach, but I did not. The epilogue of the book clearly illustrated what I found most annoying about the book. Instead of a discussion of Galileo's life after his trial, in which he built the foundation of physics that Newton built upon, the epilogue contains a discussion of painting. It clearly shows the bias of the book towards art history instead of the history of science, and I wanted more about Galileo's contributions to science.

The first two-thirds of the book deals with Galileo, his work with the telescope and Maffeo Barberni (Pope Urban VIII). The biographical material concerning Galileo is very fragmentary and incomplete. If this is your only source of information about Galileo you would hard pressed to understand why he is often spoken of as the father of physics and he laid the groundwork for Newton. His telescopic investigations are interesting, but are presented in a more coherent manner in many other books (I recommend Galileo's Universe by Maran and Marschall as a much better source for this information). I did find the information on Pope Urban VIII to be very interesting and in this area I did find new information that was not provided in the other Galileo books that I have read. The author paints a more favorable picture of Urban VIII than that of other books, concentrating on his being a patron of the arts.

The focus of the book is on the Galileo's trial. Historians have struggled with two vexing questions, which I feel the book did not address in enough detail. Firstly, why was Pope Urban VIII so angry with Galileo, when it appears that he had encouraged him to write the book that led to the trial. Secondly, why did the trial take place and why was Galileo forced, in effect, to plead guilty. To understand why the Pope was angry one need only look at the way the question of the idea of a stationary earth (supported by the Church because this is what is implied in the bible) is presented versus the new idea of a moving earth and a stationary sun. Most treatments of Galileo's book go to great pains to clearly lay out the form and substance of the book. While Hofstadter's book does discuss the form of the book, it does so in a very fragmentary fashion. For instance, while it mentions that the book is in the form of a dialog, or debate, and it mentions the names of the debaters, it never even mentions the moderator, or the fact that Galileo presents a lot of detailed technical support for the idea of a moving earth. This support answers the many questions raised by the concept of a moving earth (such as why we do not sense the moving earth) and clearly shows this to be a viable, if not necessarily the correct description. Indeed this was one of Galileo's problems - he did too good a job of defending the moving earth idea and a terrible job of defending the church's position. The names of the debaters are another critical aspect of the book, as the supporter of the church's position is named Simplicio, which sounds like simpleton or simple one in English and more importantly it also does in Italian, the language of Galileo's book. Not only is the church's position presented by someone named simpleton, he also acts like one, or at best a rather ineffectual student who is corrected by the teacher who espouses Copernicus's idea that the earth moves around the sun. The idea that the name of the supporter of the church's position was named simpleton is mentioned just once in Hofstadter's book and not discussed, whereas in every other book that I have read on the subject it is discussed at length. Furthermore, the Pope encouraged Galileo to write the book because he expected him to focus on his idea that since God is omnipotent he must not be limited by any idea that Copernicus or anyone else might come up with. Thus, at best the Copernican model should only be thought of a supposition and not a true description of how God chose to organize the universe. Galileo failed to include this idea or to clearly state that the Copernican model was just speculation and should not be thought of as depicting reality. The censors caught these omissions and made Galileo alter the book. However, Galileo put the Pope's idea into the mouth of Simplicio, and then abruptly ended the book by having the supporter of the Copernican model state that, in effect, if this is what the Pope believes we cannot question it. No wonder the Pope was angry! The Pope's idea is discussed in Hofstadter's book, but using the language of logic and in a manner which I found totally confusing. Indeed had I not read other books on Galileo I would not have understood what the Pope was saying. The one new fact that I learned was that the preface and this last part of the book were printed (in the original printing) in a different typeface, clearly showing that they were not part of the original book, but were added to satisfy the church censor.

Galileo included the censor's changes and the book received the church's approval for publication, so why was there a trial? Most historians point of the Pope's anger as the cause. However, because the book was approved, it actually did not play a very significant role in the trial. Instead, the focus was on whether or not Galileo had obeyed a 1616 injunction against teaching that the earth moves. Galileo had proof that he was allowed to discuss this idea, but just not to hold that it was true, and he believed that his book had not held that the idea of a moving earth was definitely correct, especially with the preface that clearly held that this was only a supposition. While technically this might have been true, the nature of the dialog presented in the book clearly showed what he really believed. These things are discussed, but not as clearly as I would have liked.

Given the aforementioned difficulties that I found with the book, why am I giving it as many as three-stars, which according to Amazon's criteria implies that I was neutral concerning the book, i.e., I did not dislike it (2-stars), nor did I like it (4-stars). I am giving the book credit for the many interesting digressions, such as use and the method of torture used in Italian Church inquisitions versus that used in the Spanish Inquisition or in civil trials of the time. (Hofstedter holds that torture was not used by the church in Italy as much as in civil cases or as much as in the Spanish Inquisition and its use in Italy was very restricted.) I also found the discussions of church politics to be interesting, but if you want a highly readable, but more complete discussion of Galileo's life and the trial I recommend Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel.