Finocchiaro's Introduction

This post will be concerned with the anti-Catholic and anti-Galilean extremes section.

To be honest, I really don't get Finocchiaro. I understand what he is trying to say, but at the same time I don't. First off, he says "a balanced approach to the study of the Galileo affair must avoid the two opposite extremes." Well thank you Maurice, because otherwise I would have never known that when you study things you shouldn't look at the extremes. This is what you always have been taught and what you always do. It just seems to me that that is an obvious thing to do. Also, he seems to be blowing a lot of smoke about the whole extremes, but he doesn't really back it up. He talks about them, but nothing major.

Also, to me he contradicts himself in the beginning. First he acknowledges that "Galileo's visit on that particular occasion thus had the status of improsenment, a priveleged imprisonment to be sure, but a forced residence nonetheless." He then goes on to mention a column in the road that reads "it was here that Galileo was kept prisoner by the holy Office, being guilty of having seen that the earth moves around the sun." Finocchiaro says that this expresses the myth of the Galileo affair, but what myth is that? That he was held prisoner? That's not a myth. He just said that it was true a few sentences beforehand. If he is contesting the validity of the prisoner part, then he is infact one of the "extremes" which he despises because he holds that statement as truth beforehand.

If Finocchiaro doesn't like the part about being guilty because he saw that earth moves around the sun, tough luck. That's obviously why he was found guilty. If he didn't see the earth move, would he have gotten in trouble. No. Of course not. So it all goes back to Galileo seeing the earth move.

He also says that Galileo turned out to be right about how the Bible doesn't talk about natural science. Finocchiaro's reasoning is that the Church officially declared that to be true. The Church has declared a lot of things over the years, and that doesn't make them true. The Church declared the earth the center of the universe for goodness sake. Theres just something iffy to me about Finocchiaro.

I do like the point he makes about the difference between factual correctness and rational correctness. There is a major difference as noted by Finocchiaro. Just because a statement is true doesn't mean the rationale behind it is also true. For example the conclusion that we are in Hamilton,NY is a true statement, so it has factual correctness. If the reasoning however is that wherever you are in the world is Hamilton, New York is not true, so no rational correctness. Just because the conclusion is true, doesn't make the premises true. And the same goes vice versa.