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→The burning of Galileo's books
:::As for it being partly Galileo's fault, well, of course it was. He was deliberately tweaking the nose of authority and parodying the Pope. He didn't have to. Church officials had set boundaries that let him publish all of the ''scientific'' content of his work, just so long as he put a rhetorical figleaf on it so that he was not directly challenging the Church. Galileo went just a little bit past those boundaries, thinking he could get away with it, and couldn't quite.
:::As for it being partly Galileo's fault, well, of course it was. He was deliberately tweaking the nose of authority and parodying the Pope. He didn't have to. Church officials had set boundaries that let him publish all of the ''scientific'' content of his work, just so long as he put a rhetorical figleaf on it so that he was not directly challenging the Church. Galileo went just a little bit past those boundaries, thinking he could get away with it, and couldn't quite.
:::Sorta like John Gilmore refusing to show ID at an airport because he thinks U. S. citizens have the right to travel within the United States without carrying identity papers. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong. Maybe he's a hero, maybe he's a jerk, maybe a bit of both. I happen to think of Galileo and Gilmore as heroes both, but certainly they deliberately provoked authority. Both of them were punished for it and the punishment was seriously inconveniencing to them; neither was burned at the stake. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 15:45, 5 May 2007 (EDT)
:::Sorta like John Gilmore refusing to show ID at an airport because he thinks U. S. citizens have the right to travel within the United States without carrying identity papers. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong. Maybe he's a hero, maybe he's a jerk, maybe a bit of both. I happen to think of Galileo and Gilmore as heroes both, but certainly they deliberately provoked authority. Both of them were punished for it and the punishment was seriously inconveniencing to them; neither was burned at the stake. (When I went to school, one of the comparisons that was ''constantly'' being made between the U. S. and the Soviet Union was the freedom of U. S. citizens to travel freely within the U. S. without showing papers). [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 15:48, 5 May 2007 (EDT)
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