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Entry: The Galileo Myth Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_galileo_myth#15768 Post contents: @I am not Spartacus - I can't do justice to Redondi's book here and your best bet is to read it. To summarize as briefly as possible, in classical atomism, the atom is indivisible and unchangeable In classical Democritean theory atoms are not capable of transmutation (unlike the modern atomic theory of Niels Bohr et al.) Therefore how could atoms of bread and wine change into atoms of Christ's body and blood? This was of course the kind of conundrum that the great mediæval monastic orders, like the Franciscans, liked to thrash out in academic disputations of the kind that were so numerous in the days of Albertus Magnus and his pupil Aquinas. However, the atmosphere in which such questions could be discussed had vanished in the Counter-reformation, when even to raise them was to attract suspicion. The Jesuits in Rome, acting basically as enforcers of orthodoxy rather than as fosterers of philosophical debate, took a more severe view of Galileo's atomism than did the easygoing Franciscans of Florence. At least this is Redondi's view as best I can summarize it. Sent at: 2008 12 02