Post-Copernican Science in Galileo’s Italy,” review of Federica Favino, La filosofia naturale di Giovanni Ciampoli [Giovanni Ciampoli’s Natural Philosophy] (Firenze: Olschki, 2015) and Christopher M. Graney, Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015)

In 2015, two new studies on the scientific and astronomical culture of seventeenthcentury Italy appeared: one on the natural philosophy of Galileo Galilei’s follower, the ecclesiastic and philosopher, Giovanni Ciampoli—Federica Favino’s La filosofia naturale di Giovanni Ciampoli (Giovanni Ciampoli’sNatural Philosophy); the other on the anti-Copernican views of the Jesuit astronomer, Giovanni Battista Riccioli—Christopher M. Graney’s Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo. Both publications address themes of fundamental importance for a proper understanding of the rise of modern scientific culture. They deal with issues such as the reception of Copernicus and the impact of his astronomy on natural philosophy, scientific developments in Italy in the years following Galileo’s condemnation and the complex relations between natural scientists and Catholic institutions in a phase of intensified Inquisitorial control and censorship. They aim to open up new perspectives and disclose sources that have been so far neglected to the historians of science.