Rating: 
Summary: Very thought provoking book! Highly recommended
Review: There was a shallow, mean-spirited review of this book in the New York Times recently by someone called Michael Massing. Thankfully, I read the review after I'd read the book. There's something wrong with a system that lets reviews get in to print when it is clear that the book has been totally misunderstood (and probably not even read). If you're a closed-minded scientific or religious fundamentalist, you should read this book only after consulting your doctor about your blood pressure. Everyone else will find it stimulating, exciting and enlightening.Roland deserves full credit for taking on such a controversial subject and doing it so well. It might change your life.
Rating: 
Summary: Take a course in physics
Review: This book has been written by someone who does not seem to understand the scientific theory and does not care. Galileo has made a mistake. What are the consequences of that statement: the church was right. Is he trying to rehabilitate the church in the eyes of the community? I hope I have misunderstood the book. But, with the emergence of a more fundamentalist approach in the church, I wonder. Using a philosophical approach, the author concludes that Galileo made a mistake. He is certainly entitled to his opinion. But, using common sense and the importance of Galileo's legacy in the better understanding of our universe, the book is misleading and incomplete. First, the author does not seem preoccupied by how other physicists view Galileo's role in the development of a scientific explanation of the universe. Scientific theory, such as quantum or relativity theories are not just nice poems, dreamed up by eccentric minds as the author is sometimes referring them to. They provide the best description of our reality. Are they perfect? No. But, they are the building blocks for future theories. They help us in predicting the future. With them, we can better understand where we are coming from and were we are going. Honestly, they provide much better answers then any religious texts written long time ago. The author seems to think that because Einstein discovered the theory of relativity, Galileo was wrong. I do not think that Einstein would have believed that. I suggest that the author reads Einstein's books, in particular "The evolution of physics - from early concepts to relativity and Quanta" 1938 by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld. . In the search of better understanding our universe, unfortunately, beliefs are not very useful until they become scientific theories. Beliefs are just beliefs. Too often they are wrong. Hitler did believe in the superiority of the German race. He was wrong. He uses some scientific theories to justify his argument. He was confusing belief and scientific theory. Latter, it became clear that his arguments were not based on true scientific theories, after all. This was a major mistake, resulting in millions and millions of crimes against humanity. The author spends a lot of time demonstrating that Galileo made a mistake. But, he is very brief on explaining the consequences of his mistake. There is a simple reason for that. The consequences of Galileo's mistake were good for the humanity. The author does not say that. Galileo could be forgiven for his mistake. (I wonder what is the relevance of talking about a mistake which contributed so much good to our world). Galileo was a great master of the scientific theory. By the scientific theory, mankind can better understand and control its environment. This means that we do not need explanations using god(s) as the primary cause of this or that, anymore. This means in the short term a lesser role for the church. The church was fighting for its relevance. Is it not a struggle for credibility? In arguing against Galileo, the church lost a lot of credibility. How can the author label that a mistake? Arguing against Galileo shows either pure ignorance or arrogance, I believe that the church was more guilty of
Rating:
Summary: Waste of Time and Money
Review: This book is a waste of time. The author made many statements in this book which revealed an amazing ignorance of what science is - and this in a book which claims to be about the collision of science and religion. It isn't that he doesen't know much about science - he doesn't - but that he doesn't even possess the most basic understanding of how science works and investigates. He seems to believe that science should operate like religion. They are not the same thing at all. Science is changeable and flexible. When new information comes in, as it does constantly, the theories change. This is quite unlike religion, which sticks to the same theory no matter what evidence it presented to disprove it.
Rating:
Summary: blind faith
Review: This book was most disappointing! It is greatly slanted and distorted to say the least. Galileo's only mistake was to challenge the Holy Church. And one can't do that without retribution. Galileo was correct about the sun-centered part of our universe and the Scriptures weren't with their earth-centered. Those same books stated that the earth was 6000 years old. We left the Dark Ages didn't we? Don't waste your valuable time with this book. Try others concerning Galileo.
Rating: 
Summary: Smoothly written, but lacking in content
Review: Wade Rowland has written a journalist's account of the Trial of Galileo Galilei (not the examination by Bellarmine, the actual trial) and concluded that the great Tuscan got off lightly, which fact must be acknowledged if the "hegemony of science" is to be laid low. This book can lead a reviewer off into examinations of Idealism,Skepticism, Positivism, and the like. I will leave that to others. But I feel obliged to note that Galileo's error, according to Rowland, was to presume that the structure of the physical world might be discovered through observation and experiment, rather than relying exclusively on authority, revelation, and established interpretations of the Ancients. I assume that Rowland would also prefer Lysenko to T.H. Morgan.....he certainly knew more science than the Barberinis. The problem with the book is not Mr.Rowland's philosophy, nor is this book simply an apologetic. We can use better apologetics. It is that he has entered a well-trodden field, without having the requisite knowledge. May I recommend a book, now a half century old, entitled "The Crime of Galileo"? Written by Giorgio di Santillana, historian, Roman, Catholic, it surveys the problem so much better than this book that it makes me despair for the cumulative progess of scholarship. In addition, the contributions of Biagioli, Sharrat, Koyre and many others seem to have been in vain, insofar as Mr. Rowland is concerned. By all means, attack the method of the natural sciences. By all means, celebrate faith and revelations. But when you come to write on the trial of Galileo, please avail yourself of information that is in your local library.Galileo's trial was the result of so many factors : It does a disservice to Galileo and to Pope Urban present the matter as Mr. Rowland does. Read this book, but please use it as a jumping-off point for better works.
Rating: 
Summary: Is Galileo the center of the universe?
Review: Wade Rowland, author of Galileo's Mistake, certainly doesn't have much faith in conventional wisdom. Most people were taught that the conflict between Galileo Galilei and the Vatican was the last gasp of the Age of Faith before it gave way to the Age of Reason -- a view seemingly supported by the church itself, which in 1992 officially admitted it had wronged Galileo. But it is Mr. Rowland's contention that the venerable mathematician and astronomer was not a casualty of a revengeful and backward church but instead a victim of historical circumstances and his own lack of tact. Mr. Rowland notes, for example, that the church never bothered Nicolaus Copernicus, who proved mathematically that the earth rotated around the sun more than 20 years before Galileo was even born and nearly a century before Galileo's famous summons to Rome. The difference, of course, is that between what Copernicus said in 1543 and what Galileo was told in 1632, Rome experienced the full brunt of the protestant reformation and responded with its own counter-reformation: the Holy See could no longer afford dissent that that kind. Those are the historical circumstances. Galileo's lack of tact, his "mistake" as Mr. Rowland puts it, is more complicated. While Copernicus presented his views in the Latin "De Revolutionibus," Galileo made his mark with "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany" which was written in Italian, a vulgar street language at the time. More importantly, where Copernicus released his proofs on his deathbed and to a largely academic community, a Galileo just past middle age touted to a wider audience that his proof showed that the scientific method was clearly superior to the Bible as a way to understand the universe. And lastly, while the church warned Galileo to stop his promotion of the scientific method in 1616, Galileo came back to it just 16 years later when he published "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems," where he ostensibly explained both sides of the heliocentric-geocentric debate but made no mistake about which side made most sense in his mind. The Vatican, Mr. Rowland states, had no option but to call Galileo to Rome. It is when it describes the circumstances Galileo's trial rather than the circumstances of the theological debate that this book is most interesting. Like the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial or the case against Rosa Parks in 1955, Galileo's trial was about rules being broken and not about whether the rules were right or wrong. In that light, Mr. Rowland writes that a narcissistic Galileo was clearly guilty of breaking the rules set out by an embattled and desperate church -- a church that showed its leniency by placing Galileo under house arrest rather than burning him at the stake as was common at the time. To make his points, Mr. Rowland uses fictionalized dialogue and he creates situations where he takes certain liberties to fill in the gaps between what is known as fact, and for its part, the writing flows easily (revealing Mr. Rowland's journalistic background). But for all that, Galileo's Mistake remains a thought provoking and interesting but ultimately unpersuasive book. The traditional view of Galileo's trial is surely not without fault, but the evidence that it is almost completely wrong seems too flimsy to believe, even after 300 pages of explanations ... no matter how interesting they might be.
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