Galileo’s reference to law and the humanities is exactly right. Men like his opponents, and his earlier self, do not believe anything is established in science, or ever will be. They expect science to continue like law, the disputes of the learned stretching out in commentaries and glosses till Judgment Day. In their favor it must be admitted that very little had been established in science for centuries. They were not to know that the telescope was about to be invented and Galileo about to exist. What is most blameworthy in their activities is the same tendency as in moral theology, to
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