>Gailieo was banned by the church. Hell, _printing books_ was banned
>by the Catholic Church. Hmmm. Doesn't seem realistic to belive that
>politics will stop the advancement of knowledge.

It's not an uncommon pattern - someone gets a leg up in science (or anything) and declares the race over, they have the ultimate in this field so everyone else can jolly well stop trying to beat us. SO there!
This lasts until someone actually does better them (usually to get rid of the smug smirk) and is either hired or sets the whole ball rolling.

For example, in the early renaissence, the Catholic Church declared that all anyone needed to know about gunpowder was enshrined in a learned document written by (surprise) a Catholic priest. Enter Leonardo da Vinci in his brief career as a siege engineer, with the results of a reasonable series of scientific experiments that had demonstrated rather better quality gunpowder. The Papal States got a lot smaller in the next few years.

FYI: Leon's finest hour was his observation that if he couldn't knock down a castle wall, he could certainly knock down the gates and run inside with a few light cannons to hold them open long enough formthe rest of the army to get in.

drakensisthered

So I simply said one of the great trite truths: "There is generally more than one side to a story." - Corwin, Roger Zelazny's 'Courts of Chaos'