Galileo
Science vs. The Church: The Galileo Controversy
This article was written by Audrie Dawn and was printed posted:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=54756 When I was
contemplating an article on Galileo, I found this article to be extremely well
written. It was written Dec. 18, 2002 as an essay.
In most accounts, the conflict between Galileo and the
Inquisition is presented as a battle between scientific progress and blind
religious dogmatism -- Galileo is presented as brave crusader for truth and
science, unjustly persecuted and imprisoned by the tyrannical Roman Catholic
Church for the "crime" of being right. This view is fundamentally flawed by
its failure to consider the historical background of the case: at the time,
Galileo's work was a radical and highly controversial new theory, not an
accepted scientific fact. The Church's actions represented an affirmation of
the accepted scientific wisdom of the times against a new idea with some
disturbing philosophical and theological implications, rather than a rejection
of science.
If we seek to understand and interpret the actions of the Inquisition, we must
examine them within the context of the scientific and political environment of
early seventeenth-century Europe. To someone living in the modern age, it
seems utterly inconceivable that any sane person could have ever believed that
the earth stood immovable at the very center of the universe, surrounded by
perfect crystal spheres upon which rode the sun, the moon, the planets and the
stars. We have been raised with the knowledge that our earth is but one of
nine planets orbiting the Sun, a G2 class yellow dwarf star located on the
edge of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy (Fisher 2000) , and consequently
we accept it as obvious fact even though most of us have never personally seen
the astronomical or mathematical evidence that proves it to be so. This tends
to blind us to the fact that the people of Galileo's day accepted the
Ptolemaic system as fact for the exact same reason we accept the Copernican
today -- because it is what they were taught, what all the experts of the day
believed, and what all the available data supported (if they could understand
it, which was not usually the case). Let us, then, consider Italy in the year
1610.
Nearly a hundred years since Martin Luther pinned his famous ninety-five
theses to the door of the Wittenburg Cathedral, the Roman Catholic Church was
still reeling from the theological and political effects of the Reformation
and Counter-Reformation. Although still a powerful socioeconomic force, the
Church possessed but a shadow of the influence it once wielded -- even in its
homeland of Italy, the reins of power were held by the governments of the
individual city-states, not by Rome (Gilbert 1992, Ch. 3). Predictably enough,
the Vatican guarded its remaining power jealously, using the Congregation of
the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, better known as the Roman
Inquisition or the Holy Office, to enforce Catholic orthodoxy by banning books
and prosecuting heretics. It was this body that tried and convicted Galileo in
1633, handing down the infamous sentence:
We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo, have rendered
yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of
having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy
and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it
does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the
center of the world; also, that an opinion can be held and supported as
probable, after it has been declared and finally decreed contrary to the Holy
Scripture, and, consequently, that you have incurred all the censures and
penalties enjoined and promulgated in the sacred canons and other general and
particular constituents against delinquents of this description. From which it
is Our pleasure that you be absolved, provided that with a sincere heart and
unfeigned faith, in Our presence, you abjure, curse, and detest, the said
error and heresies, and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic
and Apostolic Church of Rome (Halsall 1999) .
Galileo's first run-in with the Inquisition occurred in 1616, almost twenty
years before his conviction. On December 20, 1614, an ambitious young
Dominican priest by the name of Tommaso Caccini attacked Galileo from the
pulpit with a scathing sermon in which the hotheaded Caccini called
mathematicians in general (and Galileo in particular), "practioners of
diabolical arts...enemies of true religion" . Soon thereafter another
Dominican, Niccolae Lorini, wrote a letter to the Holy Office condemning
Galileo for heresy, substantiating it with an doctored copy of Galileo's
Letter to Castelli (Sobel 1999, pg. 66-67). Galileo responded by sending a
true copy of Letter to Castelli to Archbishop Piero Dini, and the case was
summarily dismissed by the Consultor of the Holy Office. Caccini then took it
upon himself to travel to Rome in a second attempt to bring the wrath of the
Church down upon the controversial scientist: appearing before the Holy Office
on March 20, 1615, he gave a deposition which historian Giorgio de Santillana
describes as "such an interminable mass of twists and innuendoes and double
talk that a summary does no justice to it" (as cited in Linder 2002) .
Unconvinced, the Inquisition reiterated its decision to drop all charges
against Galileo.
Angered by the accusations against him, Galileo took the opportunity to send a
copy of his newly published Treatise on the Tides to Cardinal
Alessandro Orsini, requesting that Orsini forward the paper to Pope Paul V.
Galileo then travelled to Rome himself and sought an audience with the Pope in
order to make his case for the Copernican system in person. The move
backfired, as the Pope decided to take the opportunity to have the Inquisition
rule once and for all on whether or not the Copernican doctrine should be
officially condemned as heretical. A panel of eleven Qualifiers (expert
theologians) of the Holy Office carefully examined the issue and unanimously
concluded that:
1. The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable
from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical;
because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.
2. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor
immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd,
philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in
faith (Halsall 1999).
On the strength of this report, the Inquisition issued an official
proclamation declaring that Copernican astronomy was contrary to the Bible and
therefore could not be supported as factual. It also censored Copernicus' book
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolution of the Spheres) and
several books written in support of it; the publication of De Revolutionibus
and of Diego de Zuniga's On Job was suspended until several specified
corrections were made, and a book by Paolo Antonio Foscarini which attempted
to reconcile the Bible with the Copernican system was banned outright. Galileo
was admonished not to support the theories of Copernicus since those views had
now been officially declared to be in error, but he was not punished (in order
to protect Galileo's reputation, Cardinal Robert Bellarmino issued him papers
certifying that he had not been charged by the Inquisition) and his Sunspot
Letters were not prohibited even though they strongly supported the Copernican
theory. (Sobel 1999, pg. 79) and officially commanding him not to "hold or
defend" the views of Copernicus.
Defeated but not crushed, Galileo returned to Florence and bided his time.
When his friend and supporter Cardinal Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban VIII
in 1623, Galileo visited him in Rome and petitioned him to revoke the 1616
decree. Fearing that it would undermine the authority of the Church, the Pope
did not formally lift the injunction -- instead, he gave Galileo permission to
write about the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems on the condition that he do
so in noncommittal terms, presenting Copernicanism as a hypothetical
mathematical construct rather than as fact (DeMarco 1986) . Galileo promptly
began working on Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which
was published in February of 1932 with the full imprimatur (approval) of the
Church censors. Although the Dialogue was technically noncommittal as the Pope
had required, it was clear to all that Galileo wholeheartedly supported the
Copernican system. Enraged by what he saw as a blatant betrayal of his trust
in Galileo, Urban turned matters over to the Inquisition.
There are two lingering misconceptions about Galileo's trial: that the charges
of heresy were patently ludicrous because he was obviously correct in
supporting the Copernican system, and that he was tortured and forced to
recant his beliefs.
I believe that the first misconception can be largely attributed to the way
the history of science is presented in many high school and even college
textbooks. By presenting the advancement of scientific knowledge as a more or
less linear progression from successful theory to successful theory, they
inadvertently imply that science is never fundamentally wrong, that it always
proceeds from the truth to a better understanding of the truth. The fact is
that the progress of scientific research is more like a tree being pruned;
myriad theories develop at every point, only to be disproved and set aside as
new experimental evidence is gathered. Consequently, the fact that a theory is
eventually proven right does not establish that it was clearly correct at the
time it was first promulgated.
With the evidence available in Galileo's time, there really was no reason to
support the Copernican theory over the Ptolemaic, other than the fact that it
was a good deal more simple. The modified Ptolemaic system proposed by Tycho
Brahe -- which had Earth fixed in the center of the universe, the Sun
revolving around the Earth, and the other planets revolving about the Sun --
fit the astronomical data of the day just as well as the Copernican model
championed by Galileo, and had the important advantage of not contradicting
every tenet of natural philosophy held at the time. Furthermore, there appeared
to be a good deal of strong evidence against the Copernican view. For example,
the apparent positions of the stars should have shifted as the Earth moved
through its orbit, but no such parallaxes were observed (Koestler 1964) . As
it turns out, this was because the telescopes of the day weren't powerful
enough -- but at the time, it seemed an insurmountable contradiction. In
siding with the geocentric thesis, the Church was accepting the view held by
the vast majority of scientists and philosophers -- not stubbornly and
dogmatically rejecting an overwhelming case for heliocentrism as is commonly
believed. Koestler succinctly summed up the situation in The Greatest Scandal
in Christendom , saying "...not only tradition, prejudice and naive
`commonsense', but also the scientific evidence available at the time, spoke
against the Copernican theory."
Fr. Mateo of www.cin.org writes:
Galileo actually taught that the sun was at the center of the universe, not just the solar system; later evidence showed that the sun also orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy; it thus would have been bad if the Church had given an unqualified endorsement to Galileo's theory, for his specific form of the theory turned out to be false.
The second misconception, that Galileo was abused and mistreated by the
Inquisition, can most likely be traced to the antagonistic relation between
science and religion. As historian George Sim Johnson comments, "The case
makes for such a neat morality play of enlightened science versus dogmatic
obscurantism that historians are seldom tempted to correct the anti-Catholic
'spin' that is usually put on it." Galileo was "imprisoned" (he was not
guarded, but simply forbidden to leave without special permission) in a
luxurious five-room suite in the Florentine embassy rather than in the jail at
the Palace of the Inquisition, and he was never tortured -- he was shown the
instruments of torture, a mere formality since his age and infirmity
officially exempted him from torture in the first place. Unlike the infamous
Spanish Inquisition, the Roman Inquisition operated under strict regulations
as to the use of torture:
Interrogation with torture usually was prescribed in two general
situations. First, where the evidence clearly indicated guilt which the
suspect had denied or was incapable of disproving, and second, when it was
deemed that a confession had not been full and sincere, or when it was felt
that all of the accomplices had not been named. Those who were spared from
torture were pregnant women, or women who had given birth within a forty day
period, the elderly, children under fourteen and the physically impaired.
Torture was rigidly controlled and restrictions were enforced in Roman
practice. The judge could not proceed to interrogation under torture unless
the evidence was compelling and the defense had presented its case. Nor did
the inquisitor alone decide whether torture was justified. He had to seek the
opinion of an advisory council consisting of theologians and lawyers. If
torture was to be used, the court had to follow the instructions for torture,
issued by the Supreme Tribunal of Rome. Deviations from accepted procedure
were not tolerated by Rome (Van Helden 1995).
Contrary to popular belief, the Inquisition did not in fact charge Galileo
with heresy -- it charged him with violating the 1616 injunction against
supporting the heretical Copernican theory. While the difference may seem
purely semantical to a modern-day observer, it was a matter of life and death
in Galileo's day -- heresy was a capital crime punishable by burning at the
stake, while merely supporting heretical beliefs was a much less serious
offense. The case against Galileo was based on the minutes of the Holy Office
for February of 1616:
The entry for February 25, 1616:
His Holiness ordered the Most Illustrious Lord Cardinal Bellarmino to summon
before him the said Galileo and admonish him to abandon the said opinion; and
in case of his refusal to obey, the Father Commissary, in the presence of a
notary and witnesses, is to issue him an injunction to abstain altogether from
teaching or defending this doctrine and opinion and even from discussing it;
and further, if he should not acquiescence, he is to be imprisoned (as cited
in Sobel 1999, pg. 249) .
The entry for February 26, 1616:
In the Palace and residence of Cardinal Bellarmino, Galileo being called and
being in the presence of the Cardinal and of the Reverend Father Michelangelo
Seghizzi of Lodi, of the Order of Preachers, Commissary General of the Holy
Office, the Cardinal admonished the said Galileo of the error of the
above-mentioned opinion and warned him to abandon it; and immediately and
without delay, the said Cardinal being still present, the said Commissary gave
Galileo a precept and ordered him in the name of His Holiness the Pope and the
whole body of the Holy Office to the effect that the said opinion that the Sun
is the center of the universal and the Earth moves must be entirely abandoned,
nor might he from then on in any way hold, teach or defend it by word or in
writing,; otherwise the Holy Office would proceed against him (as cited in
both Linder 2002 and Sobel 1999, pg. 250) .
That February 26 entry is now believed to be a forgery inserted into the
minutes by Galileo's enemies. Its placement on the back of the previous day's
entry rather than on a new page is inconsistent with every other entry in the
files, and it also contradicts the February 25th entry by stating that the
injunction was issued immediately after Bellarmine's admonition, instead of if
Galileo did not accept Bellarmine's admonition (which he did; according to
Linder, Cardinal Oregius was also present at the meeting and reported that
Galileo "remained silent with all his science and thus showed that no less
praiseworthy than his mind was his pious disposition."
Had he concentrated his defense on the forged injunction, Galileo might have
gone free. Instead, he argued that Dialogues was actually a refutation of the
Copernican view, stating in his defense that "...I did not consider that in
writing it I was acting contrary to, far les disobeying, the command not to
hold, defend, or teach that opinion, but rather that I was refuting the
opinion. ...I have neither maintained nor defended in that book the opinion
that the Earth moves and that the Sun is stationary but have rather
demonstrated the opposite of the Copernican opinion and shown that the
arguments of Copernicus are weak and inconclusive." (as cited in Sobel 1999,
pg. 251). Predictably enough, the Holy Office was unconvinced by that line
of defense, voting seven to none (with three abstentions) to declare Galileo
guilty of "vehement suspicion of heresy" and sentence him to formal
imprisonment for an indefinite period and reciting the seven penitential
psalms once a week for three years. Thanks to the influence of Cardinal
Barberini, Galileo's imprisonment was softened to house arrest at the Tuscan
Embassy; six days later, he was remanded to the custody of his friend
Archbishop Piccolomini of Sienna.
Many people would question the Church's reasons for getting involved in the
matter in the first place; after all, what does astronomy have to do with
religion? The answer is that the Church felt that the heliocentric Copernican
theory threatened the principle of the inerrancy of the Bible; Catholic
theologians felt that passages like Joshua 10:13, which states: "And the
sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves
upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? 'So the sun
stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole
day.' " (God) , clearly implied that the sun moved through the heavens and
not the earth. Consequently, the Church considered the Copernican theory to be
heretical, although Cardinal Bellarmine also stated in a letter to Paolo
Foscarini:
...if there were a true demonstration that the sun was in the center of the
universe and the earth in the third sphere, and that the sun did not travel
around the earth but the earth circled the sun, then it would be necessary to
proceed with great caution in explaining the passages of Scripture which
seemed contrary, and we would rather have to say that we did not understand
them than to say that something was false which has been demonstrated. But I
do not believe that there is any such demonstration; none has been shown to
me. It is not the same thing to show that the appearances are saved by
assuming that the sun really is in the center and the earth in the heavens. I
believe that the first demonstration might exist, but I have grave doubts
about the second, and in a case of doubt, one may not depart from the
Scriptures as explained by the holy Fathers (Bellarmine 1615).
In effect, what Bellarmine said was that the heliocentric theory might indeed
be correct, but until it was conclusively proven it should not be treated as
fact since it differed from the current interpretation of the Bible. Treating
it as a mathematical model, on the other hand, was perfectly acceptable. This
sentiment was echoed in the Pope's instructions to Galileo, and in the fact
that the Inquisition did not ban De Revolutionibus even after declaring the
Copernican doctrine to be heretical -- they only suspended its publication
until nine sentences which postulated the doctrine as fact rather than theory
were modified. Foscarini's book, on the other hand, was banned because it
attempted to re-interpret the Bible to accommodate the new theory; Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems , likewise, only got Galileo into
trouble because the Church felt he was intruding on theological matters, and
because he gratuitously insulted the Pope by putting the advice the pontiff
gave him in the mouth of the dunce Simplicio.
Looking back on the events of 1616 and 1633, we might note that the story of
Galileo contains all the key elements of a good thrilller -- it is a riveting
tale of exciting scientific discoveries and devious political intrigues, of
personal feuds and philosophical rivalries, of records forged and lies told.
It is important, however, to separate myth from truth: while the conviction of
Galileo was certainly an unfortunate miscarriage of justice, it did not
represent a showdown between Church and Science. At the very worst, the
Church's actions were nothing more than an overly heavy-handed crackdown on an
unproven, highly controversial new theory which had some disturbing
philosophical and theological implications. A mistake, yes. A war, no.
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