Tim O'Neill runs the History for Atheists blog, which I have a link to on my sidebar.
He has a long, 3-video series of a single interview with Thony Christie about the Galileo business, which I found absolutely fascinating. Thony Christie is a Germany-based historian of science who has his own blog, Rennaissance Mathematicus. His knowledge of the history of science seems to be encyclopedic, and the interview is a treat. The interview paints a kaleidoscopic picture of the labyrinthine politics of the period, replete with fawning scholars desperate for a buck and a steady patron, absolutist monarchs, academic backstabbing and mathematics professors making a living as astrologers. And somehow - somehow, all this produced the cosmology we know today, in a process that simply wasn't as black and white as modern mythology would have us believe.
It's a long interview, but well worth it.
