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Just a note from an actual historian of science: there's an irony in appealing to Galileo here. The popular Galileo is not the actual historical Galileo — the latter is a more complicated figure.
Notably for your invocation of him, Galileo actually lacked the evidence to distinguish between a Copernican and Tychonic worldview (the latter being the one the Church had adopted by the time of his trouble with them). Yet he championed the former exclusively.
It is clear that he did this not because the evidence was strong for it, but because it fit in with his metaphysical/philosophical worldview to have the Sun at the center of the universe. Fair enough, except the Church considered philosophical challenges to be religious ones.
Religious challenges at that time of religious strife and European wars were seen as political challenges. In other words: The Church saw Galileo as appealing to science when he was really making a political argument, and not fessing up to it. And they weren't really wrong.
That you're appealing to the authority of science to justify a blatantly political sentiment and calling it Galileo is... appropriate, I guess? But not probably in the way you mean it to be?
Galileo was explicit and historically notable in making the case that the bible does not trump science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_Benedetto_Castelli … and many other places. This whole twitter storm is either deliberate or ignorant historical malpractice on your part.
You've gotta read more than a single document on Wikipedia for your historical understanding, sorry. There are a million good books on the Galileo Affair out there — track one down.
I have. You just didn't make your case. Weinstein is looking for a person to represent a commitment to the supremacy of scientific evidence over non-scientific concerns. Galileo was complicated, so are we all, but I can hardly think of a better person to use for this purpose.
I'm interested in reading more about this. Please cite some sources where I can follow up
Galileo chose to back the Capernican system despite observed telescopic data at the time supporting the Tychonic system. Is that correct?
Not quite. The observed data (most of which was not telescopic) could not distinguish between a Copernican and Tychonic system. The Church astronomers/theologians argued that choosing between one and the other was a philosophical/religious/metaphysical choice.
Given that situation, Galileo, in advocating Copernicanism strongly, was making a philosophical/religious/metaphysical statement, not a scientific one. If Galileo had said, "either of these could be true, given our evidence," it wouldn't have likely been a big deal.
What a lot of people don't realize is, the Pope had actually asked Galileo to write him a book explaining the pros and cons of different worldviews. It wasn't some random thing Galileo did in the name of science — it was a Papal request.
He instead wrote a book that made it seem like anyone who wasn't a Copernican was a moron, which was taken as deliberately being offensive to the Pope. I just bring this up because it's not a simple "Galileo was just doing his work, the Church hates science" story. It's complex.
More conclusive evidence that history is far too important to be left to the scientists.
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