Galileo's Mistake Quotes

“We think that the promotion of happiness is what science aims for, but as the man says, the reality of the world we live in is veiled by misleading ideas. You only have to read a newspaper to see that science has its own agenda. When it does serve humanity’s real interests, it does so more or less by accident. I mean, scientists and their apologists have this presumption of service built into all their rhetoric, but if you examine it, it’s meaningless. They tell us, ‘Science is performed for the welfare of the human species.’ But when you question a particular development—for example, some particularly gruesome ‘breakthrough’ in biotechnology—when you ask, ‘Can this really be good for us?’ they shut you up with ‘Of course it’s good for us. It has to be because it’s science, and what science does is good for us.”
― Wade Rowland, Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church

“First of all, as I have said, we—you and I, the family in that gondola—are constantly in the process of verifying our knowledge of the world by acting on it and in this way testing it. This is how we deepen belief in what we know. If society discourages us from acting on religious knowledge, it also limits the extent and depth of belief. So in a society such as ours that marginalizes religious experience and frowns on the too-public demonstration of religious belief, the growth and expansion of religious truth is stunted. Relative to science, then, religion will be less successful.”
― Wade Rowland, Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church

“The message to Galileo from the highest theological authority could not have been plainer: unless and until you are in a position to clearly and definitively demonstrate the motion of the Earth and the stability of the Sun, keep your own counsel.”
― Wade Rowland, Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church

“Here, In concise form, is what I have characterized as “Galileo’s mistake.” It is an error that has been understood by philosophers from the eighteenth century onward, from David Hume to Imman-uel Kant to Thomas Kuhn, with Increasing clarity. The mistake is In the belief that nature is Its own interpreter. It is not.”
― Wade Rowland, Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church

“If you learn anything studying the Galileo affair,” I said, “it’s that the same body of factual Information can be interpreted In radically different ways by different commentators. The difference is In the preconceptions and prejudices each of them brings to the subject matter. My own take on the story is backed up by current thinking in experimental physics and the philosophy of science. When I look at the historical record from that perspective, certain things just seem to fall into place, like bits of a puzzle. The record is very complete, and it’s pretty straightforward If you just take It at face value.”
― Wade Rowland, Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church