Retrying Galileo, 1633-1992

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Retrying Galileo, 1633-1992. By Maurice A. Finocchiaro. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 485. $50.00.)

This book is an important addition to the literature on the Galileo affair. Finocchiaro is already weE known for his indispensable English anthology of the documents of Galileo's trial and its background. Now he turns his attention to the very complex history of how the results of that trial were received, interpreted, refuted, reinforced, misinterpreted, and mythologized in the next three and a half centuries up to, and including, Pope John Paul II's "rehabilitation" of Galileo in 1993.There is no other book which attempts to synthesize this history, and …