[PEN-L:1412] Re: Re: Enlightenment Insight, part two

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Galileo Galilei, Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, made
>several significant contributions to modern scientific thought. As the
>first man to use the telescope to study the skies, he amassed evidence that
>proved the Earth revolves around the Sun and is not the centre of the
>universe, as had been believed. His position represented such a radical
>departure from accepted thought that he was tried by the Inquisition in
>Rome, ordered to recant, and forced to spend the last eight years of his
>life under house arrest.
>

Yes. One of the great potential turning points in world history is the
arrival of Martin Luther in 1520--rather than 50 years earlier (before the
widespread distribution of printing, and thus before the possibility of
spreading the Protestant message widely enough to escape the standard
anti-heresy procedures of the European church) or fifty years later (by
which time the church had realized what printing could do to it--and had
established procedures for controlling what was printed).

No Luther in 1520, no ideologically-fractured western Christendom in 1620,
no place for followers of Galileo to hide from the church, and possibly no
natural science as we know it. I find Elizabeth Eisenstein's _The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe_ to be very intriguing on these issues..

On some interpretations (Ernst Gellner, for example), it was a very
near-run thing...


Brad DeLong