Galileo, Science and the Church

Jerome J. Langford's Galileo, Science, and the Church is widely recognized as a classic, balanced account of Galileo Galilei’s legendary 1633 confrontation with the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Moving past the overly polarized arguments of traditional polemicists and apologists, Langford contextualizes the "Galileo Affair" within its proper 17th-century historical, theological, and philosophical milieu. The book meticulously explores how the clash was less a fundamental war between science and faith, and more a complex dispute over scriptural interpretation, ecclesiastical authority, and the academic rigidities of Aristotelian philosophy. Through objective research, Langford demonstrates that this momentous historical drama still serves as a timeless case study on the enduring friction between institutional authority and the freedom of individual thought and expression.