Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue?
Cambridge University Press
Edition: 1st Edition, 9/14/1995
EAN 9780521344685, ISBN10: 0521344689
Hardcover, 316 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
This book questions the traditional 'grand narratives' of science and religion in the seventeenth century. The binary oppositions underlying the story - between reason and faith, between knowledge and authority, between scripture and the light of nature - have moulded it into a formative myth: the banner of modern rationalism, liberalism and individualism. While deconstructing the oppositions behind the conflict, the book offers an analysis of the complex power/knowledge field in which the drama of Galileo and the Church unfolded. The act of silencing exemplified in the trials of Galileo is in no need of demonstration. It has been so imprinted in our consciousness that to reassert it is to state the obvious. The author's story is not about the repression of truth by religious authority. It is the story of an encounter between different types of power/knowledge structures within the framework of a dialogical model.
Part I. The 'Trials of Galileo'
1. The Galileo affair
an interpretation of an historical event
2. 1616
3. 1633
Part II
The Culture of the Counter Reformation
4. The Council of Trent
the doctrinarian phase of the Counter Reformation
5. The Dominicans
a traditional intellectual elite of the Catholic Church
6. The Jesuits
an alternative intellectual elite
7. Freedom and authority in Jesuit culture
8. The Thomist boundaries of Jesuit education
9. Dominicans and Jesuits
a struggle for theological hegemony
Part III
Galileo and the Church
10. Traditionalist interpretations of Copernicanism
from an unproven to an unprovable doctrine
11. Copernicanism and the Jesuits
12. The cultural field of Galileo and the Jesuits
13. The dispute on sunspots.