Galileo Under Fire and Under Patronage
Document Type
Book Section
Publication Date
8-29-2021
Publication Title
Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo
Publisher
Springer, Cham
Publisher Location
Cham, Switzerland
Volume
40
First page number:
265
Last page number:
284
Abstract
This essay explores three challenging ironies in Galileo’s career, involving the viewpoints of leisure, adversity, and intellectual achievement. Before 1610, as a university professor at Padua and employee of the Venetian Republic, he had the liberty and protection to conduct significant and unorthodox research, but lacked the leisure and financial comfort to bring it to completion. After 1610, as philosopher and chief mathematician to the grand duke of Tuscany, Galileo had the leisure and comfort for full time research, but was unable to do it effectively because of opposition by churchmen and rivals. Also after 1610, he was both under fire and under patronage from the same institution—the Church—which both paid (indirectly) his salary and created many obstacles for his Copernican research program.
Controlled Subject
Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642
Disciplines
History of Philosophy | Philosophy
Language
English
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Repository Citation
Finocchiaro, M. A.
(2021).
Galileo Under Fire and Under Patronage.
Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo, 40
265-284.
Cham, Switzerland: Springer, Cham.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77147-8_13