Galileo Again Reevaluating Galileos Conflict With the Church and Its Significance for Today

Engraving from 1894 showing Galileo Galilei at the Inquisition in 1633 (iStock)

Everyone is familiar with the legend of Galileo: how 1 of the nifty astronomers in history bravely stood up to the Inquisition in defence of his argument that the globe orbited the sun, rather than vice versa. In recent variations of this myth, the Catholic Church has been cast in the role of science deniers who used Scripture as a cudgel to deny Galileo'south claims and found him guilty of heresy.

Office history, function science fiction, that Galileo story is less a legend than a myth. It claims to explain what happened 400 years ago, and information technology looks to a future where such mistakes can never happen once again. Just the stories we tell ourselves are never really about the past or the future; they are almost the times in which they are written. The Galileo myth reflects how we understand scientific discipline and history, church and mythology in our present times of social strife and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Office history, part science fiction, that Galileo story is less a legend than a myth.

Consider a key grapheme in the Galileo story: the K Duchess Christina of Lorraine. A descendent of the French royal family unit, she was the widow of the Medici Grand Knuckles Ferdinand I of Tuscany and the mother of Cosimo II, who ruled Tuscany in the 1610s. Galileo came from Tuscany, and Ferdinand gave Galileo his get-go pedagogy job; Galileo tutored Cosimo in math, and Cosimo fabricated Galileo his official courtroom philosopher and mathematician.

In December 1613, the one thousand duchess, a devoutly religious woman, asked Galileo's friend, the Benedictine monk Benedetto Castelli, nigh the things Galileo had discovered with his telescope and his support for Nicolas Copernicus's idea that the Earth, not the sunday, moved. To her that seemed opposite to certain biblical verses; Eccl 1:5, for case, says, "The sun rises and the sun sets; then it presses on to the place where it rises." Castelli, though intimidated by the prospect of arguing with royalty, politely and respectfully dedicated the idea of a moving Earth.

The Galileo myth reflects how we understand science and history, church and mythology.

We know all this because Castelli described it to Galileo in a letter dated Dec. xiv, 1613. Galileo responded with a letter back to Castelli a week later and afterwards that with a longer letter to Christina herself. These letters have come to be known as masterly discussions of science and religion, full of statements like "Holy Scripture and nature both equally derive from the divine Word, the erstwhile as the dictation of the Holy Spirit, the latter as the most obedient executrix of God's commands."

Just they were words near faith, a topic where Galileo had neither formal training nor church remit to teach. In 1615, the alphabetic character to Castelli became the subject of a complaint lodged against Galileo with the Inquisition. The Galileo story, full of religious politics, personality and nothingness, was off and running.

Was Christina then a scientific discipline denier? Did she and those similar her pass up scientific discipline for Scripture? Actually, no.

Compelling Scientific Reasons

Note that Galileo responded to Christina not through scientific arguments but by focusing on the Bible. That is because Christina did non disagree with the science. She granted to Castelli that everything Galileo had discovered was truthful. After all, by April 1611 a squad of Jesuit astronomers had verified Galileo'southward discoveries, discoveries that showed that Jupiter had moons circling it, that Venus circled the sun and so on.

At that place is a problem with seeing the Galileo story as a narrative of the church denying science. Information technology implies that science is a single, monolithic worldview.

The trouble was that moons circling Jupiter or Venus circumvoluted the sun did non testify that the Earth moved. Those discoveries were fully compatible with the ideas of Tycho Brahe, the about capable astronomer of the previous generation. Brahe envisioned the dominicus, moon and stars circling an immobile Earth, while the planets circled the sunday. Brahe'southward and Copernicus'due south systems were identical when it came to observations involving the dominicus, moon and planets.

But there is a more than subtle trouble with seeing the Galileo story every bit a narrative of the church denying science. Information technology implies that science is a unmarried, monolithic worldview based on unchanging facts that can be objectively proved. But consider Brahe. He admired Copernicus and his work, nevertheless he argued against Copernicus. He did and then based not on the Bible merely on what nosotros can recognize today as compelling scientific grounds.

Look at the Stars

For one matter, the physics of the time, the geocentric physics of Aristotle, explained the motions of celestial bodies by assuming they were made of a mysterious, lightweight "quintessence," not found on Earth, that naturally stayed up in the heavens and moved in circles. By contrast, earthly things were heavy and naturally tended to residuum. There was no physical explanation for how a heavy Earth might motility forever effectually the sun. (Newton's laws of motion were still decades in the future.)

A second compelling argument for Brahe's system was the size and position of the stars. If the Earth were moving, then its motion relative to the stars should have been detected. Brahe had himself observed stars with remarkable and accurate precision; he had detected cipher. So either the Earth did not move, or the stars were then distant that Earth's orbit was zippo by comparison. But how could anyone tell?

Astronomers at that time thought Galileo'due south new telescope could give them the answers. They idea they could measure the apparent sizes of stars because, as Galileo claimed, the telescope was capable of "showing the disc of the star bare and very many times enlarged." And so, assuming those stars were the same size as the planets or the sun, they could calculate their distance from the Earth.

Astronomers at that time thought Galileo's new telescope could requite them the answers. But no one at the time understood the subtleties of telescopes.

The German language astronomer Simon Marius, measuring the disks that he saw in his telescope, did the calculation and wound up endorsing Brahe's system, not Copernicus'due south. So did the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner, who noted that if the orbit of the Earth cannot be detected in a heliocentric universe but the size of a star can exist, and so the star must be larger than that orbit. Every observable star would take to be larger, utterly dwarfing the sun and every other celestial torso. In Brahe'south geocentric system, by contrast, the sizes of stars compared nicely to other celestial bodies.

The problem was that no one at the time understood the subtleties of telescopes. Telescopes focus imperfectly. What should be a point of light in a telescope winds up looking like a fuzzy spot. That spot was what astronomers, including Galileo, were measuring. A total understanding of telescopes and the relative motion of the stars would not exist achieved until the 19th century.

Rising (and Falling) Tides

A third scientific argument confronting the Earth's motion was that a falling object should not drib straight downwardly but should appear to be slightly deflected if the basis to which it falls is office of a spinning Earth. That tiny effect was first suggested by Jesuit scientists of Galileo's time. Today, information technology is understood to be a central factor in conditions patterns, and it is called the Coriolis outcome, after a 19th-century scientist. The Jesuits, understandably unable to find it, argued that its absenteeism suggested the Globe'south immobility.

Galileo'south letters to Castelli and Christina said little to those who were drawn to Brahe'southward ideas for scientific reasons such every bit these. Instead, Galileo would provide a scientific argument for Earth's motion in the 1616 essay "On the Tides" and in his famous 1632 volume Dialogue on the Two World Systems, which eventually led to his trial.

In these two writings, Galileo claimed that Earth'south double motion of rotation about its own axis plus its revolution nigh the sun sloshed the oceans back and forth daily in their basins, generating the tides. Just this action alone could non explain the Mediterranean tides, which occur twice daily. To this, Galileo argued that the tidal periods in different places were determined past local characteristics that reflected the water surge back and forth within the local basin. Thus, the twice-daily tides were characteristic of the Mediterranean merely.

When churchmen or a royal woman argued against Galileo, they were not denying science. They had science on their side.

In his 1616 essay, Galileo claimed that the Atlantic Sea's tides observed in Lisbon, Portugal, occurred in one case daily, in agreement with his theory. In 1619, nonetheless, Galileo was informed (by Richard White of England) that this claim was in mistake; tides are twice daily at Lisbon, besides. That should have proved Galileo'due south theory imitation. However in 1632, Galileo presented it again, with a fundamental alter to his statement from 1616: He omitted all mention of the Atlantic tides.

Galileo's scientific argument was fallacious. The science of the mean solar day—the observable evidence, the most right reasoning—was against him and his theory. And his opponents knew that. Francesco Ingoli, a Theatine priest, who played a part in the church's censoring of Copernicus's piece of work in 1616, cited the star-size trouble and the problem of falling bodies. Melchoir Inchofer, S.J., who played a role in the rejection of the Dialogue, noted the star-size problem; the Rev. Zaccaria Pasqualigo, also involved in that rejection, noted the event of tidal periods. Thus when churchmen or a royal woman argued against Galileo, they were not denying science. They had scientific discipline on their side.

Nevertheless, as nosotros know at present, they were incorrect.

The Nature of Science

That is non to say that Galileo was ultimately proved "right." What gives the Galileo myth its infamy is that it is supposedly nigh "science" and "facts" versus powerful people attacking "Truth." Merely no 1 today views the universe as Galileo did. The Earth may not exist the center of the universe, but neither is the sunday; information technology is just one star in a milky way of stars, which, in plough, is 1 among a universe of galaxies. And today's understanding of the universe is barely 100 years old and comes with its ain mysterious "quintessences," like "nighttime matter" and "dark energy." Who knows how science will describe the universe 100 or 400 years from now? Any Galileo story that ends with a triumphant certitude misunderstands the nature of scientific discipline itself.

No one today views the universe as Galileo did. The Earth may not be the centre of the universe, simply neither is the dominicus.

Furthermore, such a story misses the very things virtually Galileo that made him neat: his wider vision; the artistic talent that allowed him to see and intuit the truth even if incompletely; his mathematical ability to ask the right questions and advise means of searching for answers; his genius for communicating his ideas to a broad and influential audience.

But just as we must recognize that science is neither monolithic nor always correct, we also should be wary of treating the other side of this equation, the church, as if information technology, as well, were a single entity speaking with a single vox. Even in Galileo's time, many clergymen (similar Castelli) argued his side. Indeed, one of the fascinating puzzles of the whole story is that for many years information technology seemed that Pope Urban 8, who would be the driving force backside Galileo's trial, was himself a Galileo human being.

Galileo'due south story is certainly not one of church versus science. Only Galileo's trial was indeed a terrible injustice. Historians argue the root of that injustice. Some blame the personalities involved. Others cite the political and economic pressures involving the Holy Meet and the wealth of the Medici family, represented by Grand Duchess Christina. All the same others cite the upheaval of the Thirty Years War, which reached its summit during the time of Galileo'southward trial. All these pressures were real. None justified a heresy trial.

And allow's face up it: On the scale of things that the church gets wrong, the Galileo story is competing with many other sins that are always earlier the states. To cite but ane case: A generation later on Galileo, Jesuit priests in Maryland would ain slaves. That racism infects social club even today.

We report what happened in history to imagine a better future. That is the immediate relevance of the Galileo story to us today. Simply nosotros must be conscientious that the stories we tell ourselves do non fit besides neatly into contemporary stereotypes like "science denialism." If we do not diagnose bug correctly, we cannot come up with adept solutions. You practise not care for Covid-xix as if information technology were the flu. You exercise not treat systemic racism every bit if it were simply an economic issue. You do not treat the mistakes the church made with Galileo by assuming it was due to science-deprival in the church. And y'all do not treat the problem of science-denial today through the fiction that information technology was at the root of the Galileo story.

Editor'south note: The authors write for the Vatican Observatory Foundation'due south blog, "Sacred Space Astronomy," where many of the ideas in this commodity were offset developed.

thomascoven1956.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2020/09/18/what-story-galileo-gets-wrong-about-church-and-science

Share this post