An Essay by George Johnson.

“The primary reason [Galileo] was hauled before the Inquisition, [Arthur] Koestler argued [The Sleepwalkers, 1959], was not for teaching Copernicus's view that Earth and the planets revolved around the Sun, but for offending so many of his sympathizers […]

Pushing this idea furthe two new books, ‘Galileo's Mistake,’ by Wade Rowland (Arcade Publishing [July 2003]), and ‘Galileo in Rome’ by William R. Shea and Mariano Artigas (Oxford University Press [September 2003]), almost seem to sympathize with the inquisitors, making Galileo look like the dogmatist.”

Also interisting: ”Centuries after Galileo's book was banned, the physicist J. M. Jauch resurrected Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio to discuss whether a new theory called quantum mechanics provided a true picture of an underlying reality or was just a convenient mathematical tool. He called his book "Are Quanta Real? A Galilean Dialogue" (Indiana University Press, 1973).”