[kijin]

Regardless of what the standards of evidence were at the time, it surely wasn't "scientific" to threaten someone with prosecution for publishing a supposedly inferior hypothesis. That was politics.

Speaking of politics, the Reformation happened with nearly perfect timing and several countries became safe havens for those who had disagreements with the Catholic Church. This window of safety helped incubate modern science during its critical early years. Less than 50 years after Gelileo died, Newton published Principia. By then it was already well accepted, at least in England, that the Earth goes around the Sun, not the other way around.

[PhasmaFelis]

Absolutely agree that it was politics, not science, but it wasn't really anti-science either. In a nutshell, his theory was fine on its own; he was punished for insulting the Pope.