Galileo's Credo

“Galileo's Credo”: http://www.thenation.com/article/166261/galileos-credo (The Nation 2-14-12)

The publication of two recent biographies of Galileo, by John Heilbron and David Wootton, coincided with the 400th anniversary of the publication of Starry Messenger (1610), the treatise in which Galileo reported the astronomical observations he had made with the instrument not yet called the telescope. Heilbron, a distinguished historian of physics and mathematics, has spent many years studying the relations between science and religion, including how the Roman Catholic Church stimulated and materially supported a research program of Catholic astronomy. Wootton has previously written on the history of atheism and unbelief, and about Galileo's controversial Venetian friend Paolo Sarpi-a theologian and tireless critic of the papacy. In Venice there is a statue of Fra Paolo in Campo Santa Fosca commemorating his survival of a botched assassination attempt in October 1607. The cutthroats were sheltered and paid by Rome, yet Sarpi continued to defend freedom of thought and belief, both in conversation and in print, and to discuss science with Galileo. In Heilbron's account, Galileo is a versatile connoisseur and critic; in Wootton's, he is all but a modern scientist without faith.