The Crime Of Galileo

Scientific endeavor and social authority, in one form or another, are characteristics of man's life on his planet that are expected to endure for as long as we can see ahead. In this essay, which aims at analyzing their complex relations, we intend to go at length into the episode which provides, namely, the trial of Galileo and the circumstances that brought it about. But, as we work out the general conditions attendant and dissimilarities occur with the further phase of conflict which is being played out in our time.

"In the gallery of what might be called the martyrs of thought, the image of Galileo recanting before the Italian Inquisition stirs the minds of educated modern men second only to the picture of Socrates drinking the Hemlock. That image of Galileo is out of focus . . . because it has been distorted by three centuries of rationalist prejudice and clerical polemics. To refocus it clearly, within the logic of its own time . . . de Santillana has written "The Crime of Galileo," a masterly intellectual whodunit which traces not the life but the mental footsteps of Galileo on his road to personal tragedy."2;"Time"