Search

Studi Galileiani is a series promoted by a study group set up by Pope John Paul II to explore the Copernican-Ptolemaic controversy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, in particular, the role of Galileo in that controversy. This collaboration of theologians and historians of science is not constrained by any brief to further Catholic apologetics. Nor, to judge from Zycinski's essay, need it be seen as likely to lead to a Galilean apologetics which would inflate Galileo's achievements in belated compensation for the treatment be received from the Inquisition. But any comprehensive survey of Galileo's epistemology, even one as brief as Zycinski's, can benefit from the work of an inter-disciplinary group; indeed, any such survey has to take seriously the fact that Galileo worked in an intellectual world that was less compartmentalized or departmentalized than ours is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]