Essays on the Trial of Galileo (review)

674 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY "9:4 OCTOBER t991 To conclude, this is a fine book that should be studied to broaden our understanding of a central thread in so-called British empirical thought. RICttARD tt. POPKIN Washington University U.C.L.A. Richard S. Westfall. Essays on the Trial of Galileo. Vatican Observatory Publications: Special Series--Studi Galileiani 5. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana (also available from the University of Notre Dame Press), 1989. Pp. xi + 1o3. NP. This collection of four essays by a distinguished historian of science continues the Vatican Observatory's special series on Galileo, which contains occasional contributions emanating from one of the Study Groups set up by the Holy See in 1981 to review the Galileo case. (The group at the observatory has been dealing mainly with scientific and epistemological problems; other groups formed to deal with exegetical, cultural, and historical questions have yielded few results to date.) Previous fascicles in the observatory 's series have been mainly the work of Catholic scholars: Olaf Pedersen on Galileo and the Council of Trent; Ugo Baldini and George Coyne on Bellarmine's I.ouvain lectures; the Cracow Conference (~984) on "The Galileo Affair," treating for the most part scientific aspects of Galileo's work; and Josef Zycinski on Galileo's epistemology. The fifth volume breaks the mold, as it were, and offers an assessment of Galileo and the famous trial by a Presbyterian scholar whose main work has been on Newton and science in seventeenth-century England but who in recent years has turned his attention to the Italian scene. The result is a stimulating reflection on the famous case that surely answers the call of Pope John Paul 11 (in 1979, on the centenary of Einstein's birth) for a deeper study of the relations between science and religion, for collaboration between theologians, historians, and scientists to right the wrongs of the past "from whichever side they may have come." The essays deal mainly with Galileo's confrontations with the Jesuits, initially with Bellarmine CBellarmine, Galileo, and the Clash of World Views") and later with Grassi ("Galileo and the Jesuits"), and then with patronage and particularly how it influenced Galileo's fateful action in 1632 ("Patronage and the Publication of the Dialogo"). The concluding piece is a well-documented refutation of Pietro Redondi's thesis in Galileo tteretic, where Redondi had argued that it was Galileo's atomism and its Eucharistic overtones, rather than his advocacy of the Copernican system, that brought about his condemnation. All four essays have been published previously, three in journals and one in a volume honoring Gerd Buchdahl, and they appear here with a minimum of editing. Ernan McMullin has supplied an appreciative foreword in which he lays out the background to the Vatican Observatory's Special Series on Galileo, surveys Westfall 's career and credentials, and summarizes the thrust of his arguments. McMullin neither agrees nor disagrees with Westfall's conclusions, praising instead the quality of his scholarship and encouraging further studies that meet similar standards. Westfall, like Redondi a talented writer, is always a pleasure to read. His is not the style of a historian who ploddingly piles fact on fact and brings tile reader to an BOOK REVIEWS 675 ultimate acceptance of his conclusion. Rather his mind is made up when he begins writing; his thesis is clear, and he uses every device of persuasive argumentation to marshall evidence in its support. Facts are there in abundance, but Westfall is not afraid to use innuendo, suggestion, and rhetorical questions to make his point. His previous excursion into Galileo studies (Isis 76 [1985]: 11-3o) shows how effective that technique can be: it was awarded a prize by the History of Science Society, even though based on a dubious interpretation of Castelli's letter to Galileo about observations of Venus that would be rejected by most Galileo specialists. Just as patronage figured in that essay, so it figures in these. The problem comes when Westfall tries to connect this theme with the Jesuits and their opposition to the Copernican system. Though politically powerful within the Church, politics for them was never an end in itself; their...