flipflopjenkins wrote:
I mean, Jeez, we should be grateful Galileo didn’t share your attitude.
Depends upon your theory of science. Many people really honestly conclude that Galileo was in defiance of the scientific norms of the time, meaning that what the Catholic church did was essentially correct, and perhaps even lenient given that they gave him multiple opportunities to stop declaring the heliocentric idea as true, because the evidence that had accrued was still considered insufficient.
If you hold to a typical view of science, what the Catholic church did was just. If you hold to a more relativist theory, then the Catholic church was bad, but Orwell seems to be upholding the typical view of disciplines being good for maintaining the goodness of knowledge.
29 Apr 2009, 11:07 am
