Abstract
In separate reviews of The Copernican Question published in the Summer 2012 issue of this journal, Noel Swerdlow and John Heilbron find little that meets their approval while failing to provide readers with a full and accurate summary of the book’s major claims and arguments.* The reviewers engage in an exercise in deconstructive surgery, essentially breaking down and reconstituting the work into separate studies. Swerdlow, who devotes most of his twenty-five page treatment to chapter 3 (with brief side-glances at the introduction, chapters 1, 8, and 11), leaves the impression that my book is almost entirely about Copernicus. Heilbron, who confines himself mostly to what I have to say about Galileo, identifies a ..