From jsmith@epas.utoronto.ca Sun Jan 23 02:42:47 1994 Received: from epas.utoronto.ca by klinzhai.rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.5/3.08) id AA05193; Sun, 23 Jan 94 02:42:41 EST Received: by epas.utoronto.ca (931110.SGI/920502.SGI) for hedrick@klinzhai.rutgers.edu id AA13825; Sun, 23 Jan 94 02:42:22 -0500 From: jsmith@epas.utoronto.ca (Julian Smith) Message-Id: <9401230742.AA13825@epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: no subject (file transmission) To: hedrick@klinzhai.rutgers.edu Date: Sun, 23 Jan 1994 02:42:21 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 10825 Status: RO Galileo and the Church By Julian A. Smith November, 1992 On October 31 of this year, the Roman Catholic Church finally admitted that it had erred in its 359-year-old persecution of the 17th century astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). The announcement was made by Pope John Paul II at a meeting of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome. The Pope said that "the underlying problems of this case concern both the nature of science and the nature of faith...one day we may find ourselves in a similar situation, which will require both sides to have an informed awareness of the field and the limits of their own competencies." The question of "informed awareness" is an important one. Little has been shown so far by the media. Scarcely the ink was dry on the so-called acquital when magazines and newspapers began airing their surprise at this apparent anachronism. The Toronto Star said, "It's official: the Earth revolves around the Sun, even for the Vatican." Others were less charitable: the headline in one campus newspaper read "Galileo Acquited: Earth actually round, says Pope." Humour writers began to poke fun at the apparent foolishness of a 13-year-long Papal commission of learned theologians, scientists and historians, whose immense labours had brought forward an all too obvious result. Why did they take so long to establish something this simple? And how did the Roman Catholic Church get stuck in this embarrassing situation in the first place? To find out, we have to look back some four centuries. History is almost never "cut and dried", and a more detailed examination will always reveal complications in an otherwise pretty, romantic story. The image of a heroic scientist like Galileo, battling fearlessly for truth, all alone against a powerful, corrupt and ignorant religious institution, has been carefully cultivated in generations of history books...but the facts reveal a somewhat different picture. Galileo developed his theories at a time of great intellectual ferment. In the realm of faith, Protestant reformers like Martin Luther (1483-1546) and Jean Calvin (1509-1564) were undermining Catholic tradition and authority, and arguing for a much more literal interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. And in the realm of science, astronomers were wrestling with the difficult question of whether to retain Claudius Ptolemy's (c.100-c.170 AD) ancient "geocentric" universe, which had all the planets circling the Earth, or adopt the new "heliocentric" system of Nicolaus Copernicus(1473- 1543), where planets and Earth circled the Sun. How did one choose between them? Surprising as it may seem to the modern reader, in the 16th century there was no observational test or proof available for either of the two theories. Both were mathematically complex, both used uniform circular motion and a combination of deferents and epicycles to represent the planets, and both gave tolerably good predictions for planetary positions. A scientist could reasonably hold either theory "in good faith", and a decision between them could not be made on scientific grounds alone; so it is not so unusual that people looked to revelation and faith to bridge the gap. So what did their faith tell them? The Catholic Church supported a largely Aristotelian physical world view, skilfully woven into Christian theology by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). In it, Man had a privileged position as lord of a fixed, motionless and spherical Earth at the center of the Universe. Surprisingly enough, scientists had always thought the Earth to be round, even back into Ancient Greek times; in fact, one Greek mathematician named Erastosthenes even accurately calculated its diameter! It is false to say the Catholic Church of Galileo's day expected Galileo to believe in a flat earth; it was its motion that was problematic. The Bible promised the faithful that "God fixed the Earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever"; also, there were a lot of "common sense" reasons to keep the Earth motionless. If the Earth moved, wouldn't the air be left behind in space? And wouldn't the Earth be shaken apart, and objects thrown upwards not come back down again? It is in this environment that Galileo began his work. Like all other late 16th century figures, Galileo too was torn at first over whether to embrace Copernicus or hang on to Ptolemy. Oddly enough, Copernicus' densely mathematical Latin book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, had never really attracted much interest from Roman Catholics; earlier Medieval philosophers like Nicholas Oresme (c.1325-1382) and Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) had already suggested a moving Earth, and Catholics were used to interpreting Scripture allegorically. So what else is new? It was the Protestants, particularly Lutherans, who saw that Copernicus' moving Earth was fatal to their cherished literal interpretation of the Bible: "This fool [Copernicus]," wrote Luther in his Table Talk, "will turn the whole science of astronomy upside-down!" Meanwhile, Lutheran Andreas Osiander (1498-1552) had written a preface to Copernicus' book, reassuring readers it was all just a "mathematical exercise", and did not need to be taken literally. So again, much to the modern readers' surprise, in the 16th century the Catholic Church was more progressive and tolerant than its rivals on this question! Galileo was probably quickly convinced by Copernicus, but he wisely kept quiet about it...until 1610. In that year, he made a telescope and found that the heavens were not at all perfect like the Ancients said; the Sun had spots, the Moon had mountains, Jupiter had satellites, and Venus showed phases. These were all arguments against the old astronomy, but they were not proofs that Copernicus was right. But by 1613, Galileo had "gone public" with his beliefs in his Letters on Sunspots, and two years later he was telling his readers to separate science and religion, suggesting reason, experiment and mathematics were needed for the first, but faith and revelation were required for the second. It was here that Galileo began to get into trouble with the Church. Galileo visited Rome in 1615 to find out if he could teach Copernicus; and after a lengthy commission, Pope Paul V (1552-1621) said no, largely to avoid Protestant criticisms that the Catholic Church was "not Biblical enough". So Paul told Galileo to abandon "the holding or defending of that view." Galileo returned to Florence, where he decided to write a dialogue which would give both sides equal time; in the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Salviati would be the clever Copernican, Sagredo would be the interested layman, and Simplicius would be the foolish Aristotelian. Galileo wouldn't take sides, so he would be safe. Or would he? Galileo didn't know that back in Rome, someone had secretly added an extra page to the Vatican records, telling Galileo he could not discuss the forbidden doctrine at all, and if he did he would be thrown in jail! The Pope had never said this, but it would later cause Galileo a lot of trouble. So Galileo published his dialogue in 1632. By that time, the Catholic Church had a new Pope, Urban VIII (1588-1644). Happily for Galileo, Urban was fond of science, so Galileo expected all would be well. Urban had told Galileo he believed the Earth was fixed. But more importantly, Urban said, God was so clever, he could produce any effect he wanted, any way he wanted; so if He wanted to make a fixed Earth look like it was moving (or vice versa), then He could go right ahead. Imagine Urban's surprise to find his favourite argument in the mouth of the foolish Simplicius, not the clever Salviati! Urban was justifiably upset, and hauled Galileo back to Rome in 1633. It was here that Urban asked the Vatican files to be searched, and that incriminating "extra page" turned up. From Urban's point of view, it seemed like Galileo had deliberately broken the law, and insulted him at the same time. This does not justify what happened to Galileo, but at least it helps us understand why Church officials behaved the way they did. The motion of the Earth was not the point, they thought; Galileo had cheated, reneged on his promises, and broken his word! Recent books, newspapers and magazines have had a field day talking about the cruelty of the Inquisition towards Galileo. But contrary to popular belief, Galileo was never tortured; nor was he ill-treated; nor did he stubbornly swear "But it does move!" after denying Copernicus. The worst sentence he got was house arrest in his villa in the hills above Florence. So we can see there are a lot of "nonscientific" reasons why the Catholic Church decided to "condemn" Galileo, and neither side in the dispute is above reproach. Urban VIII could reasonably plead ignorance; how was he to know that the secret edict was a forgery? He was more concerned with "keeping up with the Joneses"; that is, making his Church look as true to the Bible as those pesky, rival Protestants. And, you had to admit, Galileo was particularly irritating to a lot of people, taking delight in strong, vitriolic polemics that made his opponents look like idiots; a little diplomacy would probably have saved him a lot of trouble. From his point of view, the Church was making a tragic mistake, and he was only trying to save it. Galileo quite reasonably wanted the Church to divide scientific questions from religious ones, and stick to the latter. That way, even if science advanced, the Church would never have to commit itself to a viewpoint it would later have to change. It could teach a religion that would be the same "yesterday, today and tomorrow." Where does this leave the Church now? The head of the Vatican's recent commission, Cardinal Paul Poupard, probably put it best when he said "this subjective error of judgment, so clear to us today, led them to a disciplinary measure from which Galileo had much to suffer. These mistakes must be frankly recognized." The Vatican has done this much, and is to be applauded for its apology. But it is not to be condemned for stubbornly insisting the Earth was flat, or denying the evidence of its own senses. To claim this is to do a disservice to history. From news@usenet.ins.cwru.edu Wed Mar 30 05:36:05 1994 Received: from rodan.UU.NET by aramis.rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.5/3.08) id AA17447; Wed, 30 Mar 94 05:36:05 EST Received: from relay2.UU.NET by rodan.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-mail-drop) id AA25389; Wed, 30 Mar 94 05:36:04 -0500 Received: from usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AAwjli22307; Wed, 30 Mar 94 05:36:03 -0500 Received: (news@localhost) by usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu (8.6.8.1+cwru/) id FAA09946; Wed, 30 Mar 1994 05:36:01 -0500 (from news) To: soc-religion-christian@uunet.uu.net Path: cleveland.Freenet.Edu!dt650 From: dt650@cleveland.freenet.edu (David J. Mullenix) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Galileo Date: 30 Mar 1994 10:35:59 GMT Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA) Lines: 213 Message-Id: <2nbkmf$9mn@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> Nntp-Posting-Host: piglet.ins.cwru.edu dbernard@thewho.central.sun.com (Dave Bernard) writes: >>That's odd, I've read a couple of books about Galileo and his >>problems and the only "academics" that I've ever heard of who >>were arrayed against Galileo were a group of Jesuit astronomers. >>Who were the others? > Please identify this alleged group of Jesuit astronomers. Some highlights of the affair, from "Galileo, Science and the Church" by Jerome Langford: In 1611, Galileo got into an argument on sunspots with the Jesuit Father Christopher Scheiner. Scheiner claimed he had discovered sunspots first and that they were small planets orbiting the sun. The dispute dragged on interminably and grew ever more rancorous. On December 20, 1614, the Dominican Friar, Father Tommaso Caccini preached a sermon strongly condemning a moving earth. On February 7, 1615, the Dominican Father Niccolo Lorini sent a copy of Galileo's "Letter to Castelli", wherein he defended the Copernican system, to Paolo Cardinal Sfrondrato, one of the Inqisitors-General in Rome. Cardinal Sfrondrato turned the letter over to the Inquisition. Galileo called in some friends of his in the church and it passed the Inquisition - then. In 1615, Galileo decided, against advice, to go in person to the Holy City to see what he could do to quiet things down and win support of Church authorities. In early 1616, Galileo persuaded Cardinal Orsini to present his arguments in favor of a heliocentric system to the Pope. This seems to have been what finally persuaded the Pope to put the validity of the Copernican system to the Holy Office. The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office was composed of Cardinals and their advisors. The proposition that the sun is the center of the world "was declared unanimously to be foolish and absurd and formally heretical inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of Holy Scripture in many passages..." On Feb 26, 1616, Galileo was formally admonished of the error of his opinions and ordered to abandon it. This order was given by Cardinal Bellarmine in his name, the name of the Pope and the name of the Holy Office. On March 5, 1616, Copernicus's "De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium" was put on the Index of prohibited publications by the Congregation of the Index. In 1618, three great comets were seen. A Jesuit Father, Horatio Grassi, delivered a series of lectures explaining that comets were real material bodies moving in the celestial region beyond the moon. They were published under the title, "Astronomical Discussion concerning the Three Comets of 1618". Galileo, who believed comets were atmospheric phenomena, got into a bitter and protracted dispute with Grassi. Galileo was dead wrong, Grassi was right and the dispute got intense and personal. One of Galileo's works was "The Assayer", "the greatest polemic in the history of science" in which Galileo laid down his philosophy of science ... and also penned things like this: Let Sarsi (a pseudonym used by Grassi) see from this how superficial his philosophizing is except in appearance. But let him not think he can reply with additional limitations, distinctions, logical technicalities, philosophical jargon, and other idle words, for I assure him that in sustaining one error, he will commit a hundred others that are more serious, and produce always greater follies in his camp... The Jesuits had already had misgivings about conflicts between the Copernican system and Scripture. By the time the comet dispute wound down, there was near open warfare between them and Galileo. This was a pity, because he badly needed their support. As a Father Grienberger wrote in 1634, "Galileo should have known how to keep the affections of the fathers of the Roman College. If he had, he would still be living gloriously in the world, he would not have fallen into trouble and he would be able to write on any subject he wished, even the rotation of the earth." In 1623, Cardinal Barberini, a friend and protector of Galileo, became Pope Urban VIII. This appears to have filled Galileo with false confidence. It also filled the conservative theologians and philosophers with fear that the ban might be lifted on Copernican theory. In 1632, Galileo published "Dialogue on Two World Systems". It was a bombshell, causing world wide controversy. It also gave the appearance of putting all of the Pope's favorite arguments in the mouth of Simplicio, the simpleton. Urban VIII was incensed. In August, publication of the "Dialogue" was suspended and unsold copies were confiscated. A commission composed entirely of church authorities who were mostly opposed to Galileo was appointed to investigate. They delivered their findings to the Pope in September. Galileo was summoned before the Holy Office on October 1, 1632. His health was so bad, it took him a month to get to Rome. The trial began on April 12, 1633. A Dominican friar, Father Vincent Maculano da Firenzuola was in charge of prosecution. (He was actually sympathetic to Galileo and Copernicus, but he had a job to do.) Galileo never had a chance of getting off, but there was a chance of a moderate penalty. This hope was lost when a highly biased summary of the trial was presented to Urban VIII. Who prepared the summary is unknown, but it could only have been a church official or officials. Carlo Sinceri, Proctor-Fiscal of the Holy Office and Monsignor Paolo Febei were most likely the key anti-Galileans. On June 22, 1633, Galileo was sentenced to publicly abjure his opinions, the "Dialogue" was kept on the Index of prohibited books and he was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. >Galileo was a cantakerous man who favored theories counter to >the accepted scientific theory of his day. Galileo's ideas >weren't totally original, owing a lot to Copernicus, a Catholic >priest. Also, some of Galileo's ideas were wrong, favoring, as >he did, circular planetary orbits. Yep, yep (especially the bit about Copernicus) and yep. >Still the academic, scientific establishment did not like these >radical views. They sought to quash Galileo. This is an >example of the tyranny of the scientific establishment, a fact >the current scientific establishment likes to ignore when they >put forth Galileo today as a sort of martyr. Nope, nope and nope again. Galileo pretty much _was_ the scientific establishment at that time. Science was still too new to even have anything that could actually be called an establishment, but what there was of one included Galileo, who was world famous for his discoveries. He is generally credited with being one of the pioneers who invented science and "The Assayer" gave one of the first outlines of the modern scientific method. His primary opponents were philosophers, theologians and church officials. >Galileo ignored the Scientific Establishment, so they sought >support from their friends in the Church. The Church >unfortunatley allowed itself to get sucked into this long >standing dispute, to its embarassment centuries later. It is now >sorry it ever got involved. This is preposterous because there wasn't anything that could really be called a scientific establishment in those days, unless you're referring to the Jesuit astronomers who got embroiled in arguments with Galileo. The Church wasn't sucked in to anything by anybody, its actions grew out of its own misguided attempt to reconcile science with Scripture rather than the other way around. >Galileo agreed to back off again, just as he had in the past, >and not present his theories as absolute fact. Again, he broke >his promise. Galileo was not racked or tortured, he was rather >confined to his villa, and able to live in comfort. Yes, yes and yes. >Note that if anything, another great astronomer (was it Kepler >or Tycho Brahe, I always get those two confused) ran into even >more trouble with his theories, with the Protestant >establishment in northern Europe. Tycho Brahe was not a Copernican. He authored the other leading challenge to Copernicus, a system in which the earth was fixed, the sun orbited around it and everything else orbited around the Sun. You're probably thinking of Johannes Kepler, a student of Brahe's, a Copernican and the man who discovered that planets travel in elliptical orbits. He also discovered the relationship between a planet's distance from the sun and its period and how a planet's speed changes in different parts of its orbit. Kepler was never in trouble with the Protestants for his theories. However, his mother was nearly burned as a witch several times. Catholic bashers should remember that, in proportion to their numbers, Protestants burned just as many women to death as Catholics. >This story is explained in a popular and reasoned fashion in >"The Galileo Connection," a 1986 book by Charles Hummel, >probably available in most libraries. I've never seen the book, but I note from the card catalog that it's published by InterVarsity press. From some other works of theirs that I've read (chiefly the "Hard Sayings of ..." series), they appear to be highly biased in favor of religion in general and scriptural authority in particular. I recommend "Galileo, Science and the Church" by Langford, which I've been summarizing above. It appears to bend over backwards to favor the Church, but aside from that it seems to be factually accurate and well balanced. Arnold Lesikar has recommended "The Crime of Galileo" by George de Santillana. I haven't read this, but Langford mentions him and feels he's too pro-Galileo and anti-Church. I have a hunch that either is better than the InterVarsity tome. > Now, who were these alleged Jesuit astronomers? See above. Sorry I didn't mention the Dominicans the first time around. From sarto!jhpb@uunet.uu.net Wed Nov 11 01:17:15 1992 Received: from rodan.UU.NET by aramis.rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.5/3.08) id AA01741; Wed, 11 Nov 92 01:17:15 EST Received: from relay1.UU.NET by rodan.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-mail-drop) id AA21963; Wed, 11 Nov 92 01:17:12 -0500 Received: from uunet.uu.net (via LOCALHOST.UU.NET) by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA11323; Wed, 11 Nov 92 01:17:11 -0500 Received: from sarto.UUCP by uunet.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL (queueing-rmail) id 011648.27420; Wed, 11 Nov 1992 01:16:48 EST Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Path: jhpb From: jhpb@sarto.budd-lake.nj.us (Joseph H. Buehler) Subject: Re: The pope and Galileo In-Reply-To: rolls@cis.umassd.edu's message of 8 Nov 92 06:12:01 GMT Message-Id: Sender: jhpb@sarto.budd-lake.nj.us (Joseph H Buehler) Organization: none References: Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 00:17:56 GMT Content-Type: text Content-Length: 4503 Apparently-To: I think the moderator asked for a summary of the Galileo case, so here's one. There is a good article in the old Catholic Encyclopedia on Galileo Galilei. There is a tendency for some parties to try and paint it as "Dark Ages Catholic Church Mentality" vs. "Enlightened Modern Scientific Mentality", with the palm being awarded to the latter, and boos and hisses to the former. That's a bit too simplistic. According to the CE, Professor Huxley (recognize the name?), after examining the evidence, stated that the opponents of Galileo "had rather the best of it." As far as heliocentrism goes, it should be remembered that Copernicus was a Catholic cleric, and published his work covering heliocentrism with the approbation of a Cardinal and a Bishop. Interestingly, for 75 years after Copernicus's publication, no scriptural or philosophical criticisms were raised on the Catholic side, though Luther and Melancthon condemned the book in no uncertain terms (this according to the CE). It should also be kept in mind that Galileo's scientific proofs of heliocentrism were scientifically inadequate. He had no conclusive proof. He failed to convince men such as Tycho Brahe and Lord Bacon with what he had. Scientifically speaking, heliocentrism wasn't a sure thing yet. Galileo was actually treated as a sort of conquering hero for some time after he made his discoveries with his telescope. He was well-received in Rome. He had friends in high places in Rome. Where the problems came from was that Galileo was totally convinced, conclusive evidence or not. His character was such that he could get pretty vehement about propagating and defending his ideas. This turned out to be not good, considering certain popular beliefs current at the time. It wouldn't have mattered whether Galileo got vehement about heliocentrism, except that the popular mind had come to assume that Sacred Scripture taught geocentrism. The main concern of the Roman authorities was to not shake people's belief in Sacred Scripture with unseasonable attacks on geocentrism. Remember that the Reformation was not that old yet! Cardinal Bellarmine, in charge of the case, I think, put it this way: I say that if a real proof be found that the sun is fixed and does not revolve around the earth, but the earth around the sun, then it will be necessary, very carefully, to proceed to the explanation of the passages of Scripture which appear to be contrary, and we should rather say that we have misunderstood these than pronounce that to be false which is demonstrated. Galileo was a bit too vehement in his claims that heliocentrism was a *fact*. He probably should have limited himself to saying it was an attractive hypothesis, and worked the masses into it gradually. The men in Rome judging the case, of whom Robert Cardinal Bellarmine was one, for these reasons, decided to prohibit Copernicus's work (for the first time), but only until the various editions were corrected to teach heliocentrism as a hypothesis, and not as an established fact. Scholars could still read the inedited originals, if they wanted. Galileo promised to abide by this, and things were smoothed over for a while. His character defects got the better of him eventually, though, and he started agitating for heliocentrism again. At this point, the Holy Office tried and sentenced him. He was confined for about the last 10 years of his life. Galileo's Protestant biographer von Gebler puts Galileo's trial this way: One glance at the truest historical source for the famous trial, would convince anyone that Galileo spent altogether 22 days in the buildings of the Holy Office (i.e., the Inquisition), and even then not in a private cell with barred windows, but in the handsome and commodious apartment of an official of the Inquisition. The Catholic Encyclopedia then goes on to note that Galileo's places of "confinement" was allowed to be his friends' houses! He was certainly never tortured in any way. The famous phrase "But it does move!" that he is supposed to have uttered has no solid historical evidence for it; it first appears in writing more than a century after Galileo's death. A comment in passing: Cardinal Bellarmine, who was involved in the trial of Galileo, is nowadays St. Robert Bellarmine, a Doctor of the Church, one of the Catholic Church's best theologians. It is not likely that he made serious prudential errors in the trial of Galileo. From spk@aber.ac.uk Fri Nov 13 07:19:30 1992 Received: from rodan.UU.NET by aramis.rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.5/3.08) id AA27549; Fri, 13 Nov 92 07:19:30 EST Received: from relay1.UU.NET by rodan.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-mail-drop) id AA01573; Fri, 13 Nov 92 07:19:28 -0500 Received: from ben.uknet.ac.uk by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AB16998; Fri, 13 Nov 92 07:19:18 -0500 Received: from eros.uknet.ac.uk by ben.uknet.ac.uk via UKIP with SMTP (PP) id ; Fri, 13 Nov 1992 12:19:00 +0000 Received: from aber.ac.uk by eros.uknet.ac.uk via JANET with NIFTP (PP) id <29787-0@eros.uknet.ac.uk>; Fri, 13 Nov 1992 12:18:18 +0000 Received: by uk.ac.aber.aberdb (5.57/aberclient-4.0) id AA24933; Fri, 13 Nov 92 12:19:25 GMT Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 12:19:25 GMT From: spk@aber.ac.uk Message-Id: <9211131219.AA24933@uk.ac.aber.aberdb> To: soc-religion-christian Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Path: spk From: spk@uk.ac.aber (Stephen Kingston) Subject: Re: The pope and Galileo Message-ID: <1992Nov13.121907.24845@aber.ac.uk> Sender: spk@aber.ac.uk (Stephen Kingston) Organization: Computer Science Dept., University of Wales at Aberystwyth. References: Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 12:19:07 GMT clh writes: > However there's been enough ill-informed discussion in other groups > about this topic, that it's probably worth having someone who knows > the background giving us an explanation of the real history behind the > original judgement against Galileo, and possibly some explanation of > why the Church decided to act now. I'm not going to be willing to > accept comments based on erroneous assumptions. --clh] The following article was posted to the group bit.listserv.christia by James Kiefer maybe two or three years ago: --- Since the subject of Galileo has come up, I should like to try to clear up some misunderstandings. My chief reference here is THE CRIME OF GALILEO, by Giorgio Santillana, Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, available in paperback from Midway Reprint Service, University of Chicago Press, for 14 dollars. Since I have lost my own copy in the usual way (lent it to someone who did not return it), I write from memory. In Galileo's day, almost every government required a permit to print a book, and the Papal States (central Italy, ruled directly by the Pope as temporal sovereign) were no exception. When Galileo finished his book, A DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE TWO GREAT WORLD SYSTEMS (meaning the earth-centered system of Ptolemy and the sun-centered system of Copernicus) he applied directly to Pope Urban VIII, with whom he was personally acquainted, for the necessary permit. The Pope granted the permission, on condition that the book give a balanced presentation, and in particular that it contain his own favorite argument against Copernicus, one that he had invented himself and was particularly proud of. Galileo agreed and got the permit. When the book came out, the Pope was chagrined to find that his argument was indeed presented, but not as he had expected. The book was written in the form of a conversation among friends, and the Pope's argument had been put into the mouth of a character called Simplicio (=the idiot). Moreover, the other speakers then covered the argument with ridicule. The Pope responded (or so it appears) by giving the Inquisition orders to get Galileo for something or other. He was accordingly brought up on charges, but could properly plead that he had sought and obtained a permit for the book. The prosecution replied that about sixteen years earlier he had received a private admonition from Cardinal Bellarmine that his views were of questionable orthodoxy, and that if the Pope had known of this, he would have been more cautious about giving the permit, and therefore Galileo's failure to mention the Cardinal's admonition amounted to obtaining a permit by fraud, which invalidated the permit, etc. Galileo said that he could not remember receiving any such admonition, but under pressure admitted that he could not swear he had not. The upshot was that Galileo signed his famous "recantation" and was condemned to life imprisonment. This was a blatant injustice, but not as harsh as it sounds. The prison was one of the Pope's summer palaces, which was turned over to him for life, and he continued to conduct experiments, to receive visitors without restriction, and to publish on any subject except astronomy. He here developed and perfected his works on terrestial physics, works which undermined the theoretical basis of Ptolemaic astronomy. The wording of the "recantation" is of some interest. The key sentence reads pretty much as follows: I, the undersigned, Galileo Galilei, renounce and condemn the belief that the sun is at the center of the world, and that the earth rotates on its axis, and also has a daily motion. Now the word "world" (=mundus) is ambiguous. It can refer to the universe, or to the earth. Similarly, the daily motion of the earth, according to Copernicus, is precisely its rotation once a day on its axis. It is therefore false (according to Copernicus) to say that the earth has two motions, one rotation and the other a daily motion. It is also false to say that the sun is at the center of the earth. Thus Galileo should have had no difficulty about signing the document. Is there any evidence that this is not just ingenious twisting of words? Four considerations come to mind. (1) Torricelli, Galileo's friend and pupil, best known as the inventor of the barometer, when he heard that Galileo had repudiated Copernicanism under oath, said, "Alas, he is damned. He has sworn falsely." But when he saw the text of the recantation, he said, "Oh joy, he is not damned." (2) When the tribunal presented Galileo with their draft of a recantation, he flatly refused to sign it. He then negotiated a revised text, which he did sign. (3) Both Galileo and the members of the tribunal were men who chose their words carefully, and who knew the art, essential in politics whether ecclesiastical or otherwise, of wording a document to as to convey the impression of saying more, or less, than is actually said. (4) At least some of the tribunal members (Santillana argues a majority of them) were themselves of the Copernican persuasion, and would be sympathetic to a resolution of the matter that gave the Pope his personal revenge but without forcing Galileo to repudiate what he and they believed to be the truth. The Galileo episode has often been cited as evidence that Science and Religion (some prefer to say, Science and Theology) are by their very nature irreconcilable enemies. In fact, a close look at the Galileo episode seems to me to yield two morals both quite different from this. One moral, of course, is that if you need a permit from a board in order to do something, whether publish a book or have your property rezoned, it is unwise to pull the nose of the chairman of the board in public. Another moral is that if you establish a government committee to safeguard public morals, the committee members will assume as self-evident that nothing could be more subversive of public morals, and therefore of the very foundations of society, than a deed that strikes at the guardians of morality by making the members of said committee look personally ridiculous. Example: The Watergate scandal began because the press was obtaining confidential reports out of the Nixon Administration, and high officials were determined to learn who was responsible. In the process of trying to learn, they cut corners. One might have expected the investigating committee to be keenly aware that there are things more important than stopping leaks to the press. However, some stories appeared in the press about the committee, including, for example, a statement by one committee member that another member was apparently incapable of answering any question, including, "What time is it?" without first frowning and staring at the ceiling for several seconds. (A perfectly correct observation, by the way, which is precisely why it caused such a commotion.) The committee responded by taking off a full week from the job of saving the country to conduct a full-time investigation into the question of who had been betraying his sacred trust by reporting confidential information to the press, information that, by making the committee, the guardians of the Constitution, look silly, amounted to an attack on the Constitution itself. (My source here is an article in the WASHINGTON MONTHLY at the time.) The over-all theological atmosphere of Galileo's time and just before was far from a rigid commitment to the idea of a fixed earth. Nicolas of Cusa, who died a century before Galileo was born, wrote, "When we say that the earth does not move, we mean simply this, that the earth is the point from which man makes his observations of celestial phenomena." A modern physicist discussing relativity theory could not improve on that. During Galileo's lifetime, the Inquisition was officially asked whether someone who revealed in the confessional that he held the Copernican view and was not about to give it up should be denied absolution as an impenitent heretic. The official answer was "no". I conclude that the punishment of Galileo was based, not on any conflict between his view and Church doctrine, but on the Pope's regrettable but unsurprising conviction that anyone who publicly makes a laughing-stock of the Pope is striking at the foundations of all that is good and decent and must not be permitted to get away with it. Urban VIII is by no means the only public figure to reason like this. I feel the urge to give several more examples, but this post is already too long. James Kiefer --- Stephen (James Kiefer's user id is JEK@GOV.NIH.CU - you may want to ask him about makeing this file a FAQ document). -- Stephen Kingston - spk@uk.ac.aber | */^^-| | If you can do a better map spk%uk.ac.aber@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk | ./| | | of Wales then this in just Computer Science System Support | _/' < | four lines, then I would Group - U. of Wales, Aberystwyth | `-\__/- | like to hear from you!