The Galileo affair was an isolated, and in fact quite untypical, episode in the history of the relations between science and theology, almost as untypical as the Dayton monkey-trial was. But its dramatic circumstances, magnified out of all proportion, created a popular belief that science stood for freedom, the Church for oppression of thought. That is only true in a limited sense for a limited period of transition. Some historians, for instance, wish to make us believe that the decline of science in Italy was due to the ‘terror’ caused by the trial of Galileo. But the next generation saw the
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