As supplementary reading material (more to do with Galileo's character rather than competence), I highly recommend the series of articles [1] entitled "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown", which provides a great deal of historical, political and scientific context for Galileo's actions and legacy.

[1]: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

Interesting, thank you.

Will this be the next holistic take on a legendary mind that spurs an overreaction in popular culture due to the novelty of being able to objectively criticise a giant, a la Edison? It's even got Aristotle in Tesla's place as the underappreciated adjacent figure.

Columbus, Edison, and now Galileo. Turns out a lot of icons of Enlightenment don't survive the light of historical nuance.

That's not a problem as long as we use that opportunity to give some forgotten heroes a bit more limelight.

Huh. It'll be interesting to compare this to ThonyC on the topic. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=galileo+site%3Athonyc.wordpress.co...