Comment by asimpletune

Basically the church wasn’t as crazy or evil as they’re portrayed now with their persecution of Galileo: he didn’t actually have convincing evidence because the real theory took hundreds of years later to be accepted. It’s important and satisfying to see our ancestors weren’t simply superstitious mystical fools, just people who were behaving somewhat reasonably with the information they had at the time. The incentives around them played a role but didn’t consume every facet of their decision making. Great article.