The reasoning behind the condemnation takes us back to the end of the previous century, when the Jesuits, by then leaders in the world of academic science, applied the Scholastic method to astronomical questions, treating them as if they were problems of canon law or moral theology. The following passage, written about 1590, is typical of the style of argument; it is the same style as found in, for example, the debates on probabilism, with its mixture of considerations of plausibility and appeals to authority. It is worth quoting at some length, to convey the exact consistency of the
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