A note: if Kuhn believes the results favored Aristotle, he *is* wrong on that point. If it’s that Galileo’s physics are, he is wrong on that point, although I don’t think that is his point. I think he points out the experiment wouldn’t work only to say that the experiment never happened, not that Galileo was wrong in principle. I think the larger point is that Galileo only ever proposed a thought exercise; the supposed demostration is a legend, as Galileo’s comments demonstrate.
Read Galileo’s quote; it sounds like everyone acknowledges that objects don’t fall at speeds proportional to their masses. But what is Galileo’s point? If he’s arguing that empiricism is superior to rationalism, he’s using a straw man, the same one that got him in trouble.
Aristotle opposed empiricism; the Church rejected empiricism on matters of revealed faith (the scripture), and syllogisms based on that revealed faith. Some in the church (Aquinas) tried to use syllogisms on matters far beyond the expertise of the scripture (locating Eden, for instance, in central Asia), and other Catholics regarded certain Aristotelian concepts as supportive of the faith. In a sense, they reasoned, because Aristotle helped prepare the Greek world for the logic that Paul would use to promote Christianity, Aristotle prepared the world for Christianity. Therefore, they saw the hand of God behind certain of Aristotle’s teachings.
The Church did not, however, assert that Aristotle’s thoughts was absolutely valid, nor was its faith dependent on Aristotle, nor were any Christians obliged to defend Aristotle. (Hadn’t the Pharoah also prepared Israel for Mosaic law in a sense?) Bellarmine clearly saw that Galileo was using Aristotle’s limitations as straw man to attack Christianity and he blunted the attack by clearly annunicating that the Church was ready to accept Galileo’s empiricism, just that they weren’t ready to overturn previously held notions until Galileo had actually empirically proven his notions; Copernicus was the model scientist to Bellarmine’s way of thought: he put forth interesting ideas, allowing people the opportunity to find support for them in case they were ture, without ever insisting that they were true.
But Gallileo perceived the Church’s “Aristotelian-by-default” positions as obstacles to the rapid progress of his science. And so he trained his attack on the institutions of the church itself, using Aristotle as a straw man against the entire notion of preserved knowledge.
"... the facts, however, have not yet been sufficiently grasped; if ever they are, then credit must be given rather to observation than to theories, and to theories only if what they affirm agrees with observed facts." - Aristotle, on the life of bees
The Church did not, however, assert that Aristotle’s thoughts was absolutely valid, nor was its faith dependent on Aristotle, nor were any Christians obliged to defend Aristotle.
"That Galileo often treated the motion of the earth as real and not hypothetical" - #3 in a list of "textual points offensive to the Church" in the Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The fixity of the earth was a point of Church doctrine, needless to say, and this was founded in Scriptural interpretation, not in devotion to Aristotle.
But Gallileo perceived the Church’s “Aristotelian-by-default” positions as obstacles to the rapid progress of his science. And so he trained his attack on the institutions of the church itself, using Aristotle as a straw man against the entire notion of preserved knowledge.
Where are you getting this? Galileo never attacked any institution of the Church, but turned himself inside out trying to conform to the Church's requirements, and he thought he was successful in this.
He never attacked Aristotle either, but only slavish devotion to his works. He insisted that Aristotle himself would be interested in and open to his findings.