Reply to Chris Graney, Letter to the Editor

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

9-1-2017

Publication Title

Catholic Historical Review

Volume

103

Issue

4

First page number:

827

Last page number:

830

Abstract

This is a response to Graney's letter to the Catholic Historical Review, complaining about my review of his book Setting Aside All Authority (Notre Dame, 2015). I appreciate the fact that the journal is giving me the opportunity to respond. In my review of Graney's Setting Aside All Authority, I interpreted its main [End Page 827]theme to be the criticism of a common myth: that the Copernican revolution was slowed down only by intellectual dogmatism and/or religious obscurantism, which led many to reject the proof of the earth's motion provided by Copernicus, the telescope, and/or Galileo's Dialogue. Moreover, I criticized Graney's criticism as amounting to the construction of the opposite myth: that until the second half of the seventeenth century, the scientific arguments clearly favored the thesis that the earth stands still at the center of the universe.

Keywords

Copernican; Scientific arguments; Galileo; Almagestum Novum; Riccioli

Disciplines

History of Philosophy | Philosophy

Language

English

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