Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? [Hardcover]

Rivka Feldhay (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521344689 | ISBN-13: 978-0521344685 | Publication Date: May 26, 1995

Historians of science have tended to view Galileo's trials as an example of the conflict between science and religion in the seventeenth century. This book questions the traditional "grand narrative" that opposes science and religion, and thus attempts to reconceptualize a key episode in the history of modern science. Feldhay offers a new interpretation of the debate between Galileo and the Church, viewing it as a "dialogue" rather than a "conflict." The known contradictions between the documents of Galileo's "trials" are reread as expressions of the contradictory nature of the Counter Reformation Church. Torn between different cultural orientations (Dominican and Jesuit), the Church was unable to crystallize a coherent attitude towards Galileo's science.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is noteworthy for its original approach to the interpretation of Galileo's trial and for its wealth of information about the ecclesiastical and theological history of the period." Isis

"Feldhay's textual scholarship is careful, her distinctions are finely drawn, and her case is complex....the most original study of the 'Galileo affair' in recent decades....Present-day Jesuits and Dominicans will find much to quibble about here, but they also can learn much from her researches." Theology Studies

"Drawing on original documents and past interpretations, Feldhay looks at the trials of Galileo in a fresh light and comes away with some new conclusions....one of the more interesting and fresh looks at a fascinating political, philosophical and human drama." Gordon Bond, The Practical Observer

"...Feldhay is surely right in placing Galileo in the context of the Dominican-Jesuit struggle for intellectual supremacy in the church, and in suggesting that the Jesuits, who early on had a deep sympathy for Galilean science, were forced by ecclesio-political factors to back away....this book makes an important contribution." Denis Janz, Religious Studies Review

"In this important new study, Rivka Feldhay challenges the predominant scholarly and popular view of the conflict between Galileo and the church....a convincing narrative....In support of the argument, Feldhay provides rich historically nuanced information that allows the reader to see the trajectory of conflicting elite cultures active during the early seventeenth century." James B. South, Canadian Philosophical Review

"It is historically well informed and, in the main, interpretively sensitive in a context where such qualities have often in the past been in short supply." American Historical Review

Book Description

This book questions the traditional "grand narratives" of science and religion in the seventeenth-century. The known contradictions between the documents of Galileo's "trials" are reread as expressions of the contradictory nature of the Counter Reformation Church. Looking back at the formative years of Tridentine Catholicism demystifies its monolithic and coercive tendencies. Being torn between different cultural orientationsNthe Dominicans' and the Jesuits'Nthe Church was unable to crystallize a coherent attitude towards Galileo's science.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 316 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (May 26, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521344689
• ISBN-13: 978-0521344685
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,535,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Intellectual Tour de Force, July 8, 2003

By 

Andrew O'Connor (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? (Hardcover)

I am normally sceptical of history (or any other) books that cite that mountebank Michel Foucault with approval, as Rivka Feldhay does early in this book. However, this proved to be a magnificent exception. Dr Feldhay's fresh look at the Galileo affair is a work of original scholarship and great erudition. She challenges the familiar triumphalist account given by most historians of science, which offers as its sole explanatory key the conflict between courageous empiricism and authoritarian obscurantism. Importantly, she does so without a trace of the science-bashing to which lesser students of the history and philosophy of science are sometimes given.

Drawing on her profound knowledge of Thomist philosophy and of the academic and cultural milieu in Counter-Reformation Europe, Dr Feldhay resituates the Galileo trials in the midst of an intellectual turf war between the Dominicans and the Jesuits. None of the protagonists, including Galileo, comes out the story looking especially heroic. The story is one of immensely sophisticated and learned men who were misled by their own institutional, personal and scholastic rivalries and by epistemological confusion over the nature of scientific hypotheses into a foolish, unnecessary and short-sighted condemnation of Copernicanism and silencing of Galileo. In doing so, they not only distorted the teachings of the Council of Trent on the intepretation of scripture, they also did lasting damage to the vibrant school of Catholic, mostly Jesuit, astronomy. Tragically, the popular understanding of the Galileo story persists to this day as emblematic of the supposed conflict between faith and reason.

If the book has one flaw, it is that it assumes the reader is well acquainted with the facts of the Galileo trials. However, as someone who has no particular familiarity with the Galileo case, I can still unreservedly recommend the book as a fine exercise in intellectual history.

[Readers of this book may be also be interested in Richard J. Blackwell's 'Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible' (1991 University of Notre Dame Press), which includes the complete translated texts of several of the documents discussed by Dr Feldhay.]