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Recent Narratives on Galileo and the Church: or The Three Dogmas of the Counter-Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Rivka Feldhay
Rivka Feldhay
Affiliation:
The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and IdeasTel Aviv University
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Abstract

This article confronts an old-new orientation in the historiographical literature on the “Galileo affair.” It argues that a varied group of historians moved by different cultural forces in the last decade of the twentieth century tends to crystallize a consensus about the inevitability of the conflict between Galileo and the Church and its outcome in the trial of 1633. The “neo-conflictualists” — as I call them — have built their case by adhering to and developing the “three dogmas of the Counter-Reformation”: Church authoritarianism is portrayed by them as verging towards “totalitarianism.” A preference for a literal reading of the Scriptures is understood as a mode of “fundamentalism.” And mild skeptical positions in astronomy are read as expressions of “instrumentalism,” or “fictionalism.” The main thrust of the article lies in an attempt to historicize these three aspects of the Catholic reform movement. Finally, the lacunae in insufficiently explored historiographical landscape are delineated in order to tame the temptation to embrace the three dogmas, and to modify the radical conflictualist version of the story of Galileo and the Church.

Type
3. The Contexts of the Church, Patrons, and Colleagues: New Science and Traditional Power Structures
Information
Science in Context , Volume 13 , Issue 3-4 , Autumn-Winter 2000 , pp. 489 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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