The Galileo legend as scientific folklore

Abstract

The legend of Galileo's persecution by the Roman Catholic Church is treated here as an example of scientific folklore. By examining the various ways in which this legend diverges from scholarly readings of the Galileo affair, we can assess the part that folklore plays in building and sustaining a professional ideology for the modern scientific culture. The forty treatments of the Galileo episode that are examined here were found in sources, such as textbooks and popular histories, which are presumably intended as socializing rhetorics. An examination of these narratives suggests five distinct themes of the scientific ideology.

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