Was the Church right?

The Galileo’s Irrationality in Paul Feyerabend’s Vision

Abstract

The paper aims to investigate the Galileo case from Feyerabend’s perspective. Galileo’s judgment has a prominent place in the history of science especially in relation to its political unfolding. In effect, the scientific community and academia characterize an misjudged Galileo, while the Church is represented as the enemy of science in history. This paper aims to examine some important points of Feyerabend’s philosophy. First of all, the problem of rationality in the face of the progress of science will be discussed. In this moment, Feyerabed makes a defence of the irrational procedures for the scientific scope. After that, the relationship between science and ideology will be examined, since science has certain predominance over other fields. Finally, our discussion is directed to Galileo’s case, since Feyerabend realizes that the Church was closer to rationality than Galileo when he examined the history of science and Galileo’s judgment. According to Feyerabend, Galileo’s theory was far from experience and observation and thus the physicist’s justification was insufficient to prove his theses. Moreover, the inquisitorial agents warned Galileo of the possible implication of disseminating his theory. The physicist fulfilled two essential parts in Feyerabend’s philosophy: the complexity of historical narrative and the defense of irrational procedures in development of science.