Francesco Redi and the Galileo Affair
Francesco Redi is very important to any discussion of events relating to the Galileo and the Church. These events are most often portrayed as dramatic evidence for the "the recurring clash between religion and science" (see Galileo's Battle for the Heaven's). But so many of the facts relating to Francesco Redi seem to conflict with this interpretation. Francesco Redi lived a comfortable life in Florence, walking the same streets and working for the same people that Galileo did (the Medicis). He died without encountering any problems with the Church. Depending on the author, Galileo's use of Italian instead of Latin was supposed to be a problem with the Church. But with Francesco Redi, it wasn't. Any challenge to Aristotle was also supposed to be a problem for the Church. But it was Aristotle who proposed life-forms such as maggots spontaneously generated, and Redi proved that to be false (although he continued to believe other life-forms might spontaneously generate). The Galileo Affair was supposed to have caused the decline of science in Italy, yet we we have one of the most important advances in the scientific method happening a short time later in the very same city.
The life and work of Francesco Redi provides cause to rethink the most common interpretation of the Galileo Soundbite; that it was, in essence, a conflict between science and the church. If the Galileo Affair demonstrated the inherent conflict between the church and science why wasn't this conflict repeated 25 years later when very similar circumstances arose. Could there have been other factors involved in what happened. Could Galileo's personality and his personal and professional disagreements with the other scientists of the day have played a more central role. Certainly, some of the most important historians and philosophers think so. And leaving personality aside, it could also be that Francesco Redi may have demonstrated better methodology in disproving Aristotle than did Galileo.