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This week, the American Library Association (ALA) is co-sponsoring the 27th annual Banned Books Week (BBW). From September 27 to October 4, 2008, the ALA is celebrating "the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular". Gee, I wonder if the ALA has ever heard of CR4.
Book banning isn't just an American phenomenon, of course, but the subject resonates in a nation governed by a Constitution whose First Amendment protections are both a guiding principle and a subject for debate. So read on, MacDuff (to twist a quote from Macbeth).
The Forbidden Fruits of Science and Science Fiction
As your high school teacher may have told you, banned books have included literary landmarks such as Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. They've also included works of science and science fiction, subjects that are close to the hearts and minds of many of CR4ers. In honor of Banned Books Week then, The Y Files brings you three titles that could subvert your morals, warp your mind, or otherwise lead you astray. Who said that reading isn't fun?
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Galileo Gallilei)
Long before one American library labeled the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "trash suitable only for the slums", Galileo Galliei stood trial for writing that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. In October 1632, the Italian astronomer published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a scholarly tract which examined heliocentric and geocentric models of the solar system.
Although Galileo was a devout Catholic, his advocacy of the sun-centered theory formulated by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus soon captured the attention of Church authorities. As one Dominican cleric warned, "geometry is of the devil" and "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies." Upon publication of his Dialogue, Galileo was ordered to appear before the Holy Office in Rome. Tried and convicted of heresy, he was placed under house arrest until his death in 1642.
Galileo's Dialogue remained on the Index librorum prohibitourm, a list of banned books, for almost two centuries, until 1822. Later, in 1992, Pope John Paul II issued an apology and lifted the edict of Inquisition against the man who is sometimes called "the father of modern physics".
Editor's Note: Click here for Part 2 of this series.
Resources:
http://www.ala.org/
https://www.thoughtco.com/classic-literature-4133245
http://www.malaspina.org/galileog.htm
http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/2307
http://quotes.forbiddenlibrary.com/
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Re: Celebrate Banned Books Week (Part 1)
