Ten Scholarly Interpretations of The Galileo Conflict (In A Few Sentences Each)
Why Galileo? Why condemn him? If, as many suppose, heliocentrism was just
revolutionary science necessarily conflicting with a dogmatically repressive
church—why did the church not persecute Copernicus, whose work On the Revolution of the Spheres clearly did
challenge the reigning Aristotelianism of its day, and had at the time of
Galileo’s condemnation been circulating for nearly ninety-years? As I (and so many others) have written elsewhere, it wasn't because the church was against science (they were, until the 20th century, its largest financial and conceptual contributor); it wasn't because heliocentrism decentralized mankind; it wasn't because it demanded an infinite universe that made man insignificant specks; it wasn't because the church also believed in a flat earth; it wasn't because of a supposed "Dark Ages"; (and so on) ... Again, contrary to some popular opinion,
Copernicus’ work caused hardly a stir in the Catholic church during that time (and was, in fact, dedicated to the Pope).
Initially this was explained by several
scholars who said quite simply that nearly no one had read Copernicus’ On the Revolution of the Heavens due to
it being filled with four-hundred pages of technical detail, and being hard to
acquire to boot. This has since become
an indefensible thesis due to the meticulous and life-long work of Owen
Gingerich, Senior Emeritus Astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory. Gingerich, by visiting
nearly every existing first and second edition copy of Copernicus’ On the Revolution of the Heavens around
the world, tracked the intricate network of early scholars that read and
appreciated the book by way of chasing down the notes written in the margins of
these copies.[1] In fact, some of the main proponents of
Copernican theory were Martin Luther’s colleagues at Wittenberg, though as
Robert Westman notes a diverse array of theologies attached themselves to
Copernican interpretation.[2]
[Excurses: Want more detail? Read Maurice Finocchiaro's Retrying Galileo]
1.) Stillman Drake, Galileo At Work: His Scientific Biography. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 576pp.
The root cause of the affair was not science and religion, but between science and philosophy; by philosophy Drake means professors of philosophy (that is, generally, forms of Aristotelianism). While it is a bit unclear, by "scientists" (a term not actually invented until the 1830's by William Whewell) whether he means professors of mathematics, or natural philosophers, it is clear that his thesis involves the fact that Galileo ran afoul of the reigning philosophical Aristotelianism and its ordering of the "scientific" disciplines. It was thus a case study of how far the church had resolved itself to defend the reigning Aristotelianism of its day.2.) Kenneth J. Howell, God's Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern Science (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 319pp.
The interesting question is not Copernican vs. non-Copernican (that is, helio- vs. geocentricism) or a duel between biblical literalism thinking scripture had something to say about astronomy vs. those who accepted "accommodation theory" (that is, that God expresses spiritual truths in the limited, contextual language of a historically bounded people group). Rather the real conflict was between differing concepts of science: realists (Galileo) vs. non-realists. Non-realists described Copernicanism as being a useful mathematical fiction; Galileo, against the advice of his contemporaries and the explicit instructions of the Inquisition, said he conclusively proved the real, physical validity of heliocentrism while also making the Pope sound like an idiot (thereby also adding "subverting Aristotelian ideas of the limits of astronomy" to his sins as well).
Amid the immense complexities of the Galileo affair may lie nothing less and nothing more than the inevitable structural incompatibilities between progressive and conservative elements within sociological bodies like "church" and "scientists." It is as such often "theology vs. theology" and "science vs. science." More importantly, there is no "warfare of science and religion." If anything, the "warfare" only emerges. "We need to distinguish sharply between two controversies: the original one, which climaxed with Galileo's condemnation in 1633, and the subsequent one, which continues down to our own day" (132).4.) Rivka Feldhay, Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 316pp.
One can hardly argue it was the "Catholic Church" persecuting Galileo, for the church was not a monolithic institution (indeed the Pope and the Inquisition were often not aware of what the other was doing). Rather it illuminates the situation to partially view it in terms of a Dominican (conservative, Aristotelian) vs. Jesuit (progressive, non-Aristotelian) argument over the nature of science itself. While this isn't a perfect distillation of "sides" it nonetheless makes evident that this was as much an "in-house" debate among scientists as it was a debate among theologians. Indeed these two categories intermix.5.) Alberto A. Martinez, Pythagoras, Bruno, Galileo: The Pagan Heresies of the Copernicans (Cambridge: Saltshadow Castle, 2014), 411pp.
In 1616 the Inquisition denounced Galileo's "false Pythagorean doctrine" that the earth moved around the sun. Quite curiously, Galileo's mathematical and physical assertions not only lock into the earlier heresies of Giordano Bruno, but also into a lengthier and more weighty heresiological pedigree of Pythagoreanism. Linked into a train of heresy, Galileo stood no chance in a post-Trent counter-Reformation environment.6.) J.L. Heilbron, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1999), 366pp.
An interesting twist on the "conflict thesis" between church and science: the church was well within it's epistemological rights to "persecute" Galileo. This pushback performed an invaluable service in making Galileo reevaluate his "demonstrative" ideal of science as a leftover of Aristotelianism, thus moving into a more "probabilistic" mode of argumentation. It also pushed the point that by Galileo's own standards, and by the standards of scientific reasoning of the day, Galileo absolutely did not prove heliocentrism as a physical hypothesis, however much he disproved certain Aristotelian and Ptolemaic elements. In addition: there can be no "warfare of science and the church" narrative as traditionally conceived, because cathedrals, as a matter of historical record, were the best astronomical observatories of the day. The church fostered science.
Galileo cannot be presented as the clear-eyed empiricist over-against a church that refused to "see what was in front of them." For one, in order to interpret common sense experience as proving heliocentrism, an entirely new grammar and frame of reference needs to be learned and taught. For example, when one drops an object from a high tower, it doesn't land 100 feet west (as one might expect if the earth were rotating). We now understand "inertial frames" of reference; they did not. In order for this "tower experiment" to not count against heliocentrism, a new mode of imagination had to be taught. Galileo, in his arrogance, failed to do so. In addition, in order to believe artificial instruments (e.g. the telescope) can accurately represent the natural world, another new set of grammar is also required (see in addition: Steven Shapin and Simon Schaefer, Leviathan and the Air Pump). Galileo again failed. Not only by teaching imagination, but because his instruments were deemed unreliable by a majority of his learned contemporaries.8.) Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993), 402pp.
Far from "church vs. science" the Galileo affair must be viewed in terms of the pressures that courtly patronage put upon him. Galileo fashioned his science and his career to the demands of patronage and its complex systems of wealth, power and prestige. This ran afoul of Papal and Catholic procedures for innumerable reasons: courtly science was not constrained by Aristotelianism in the way the Catholic universities were; instruments of science like the telescope gained prestige in the sense that they could further dynastic and military accomplishment - this prestige did not carry into Church science which valued pure knowledge; Galileo also alienated his courtesan admirers by his absolute pronouncements which were frowned upon by a rich elite who enjoyed keeping intellectual conversation open in continuing show and debate.9.) Owen Gingerich, "Crisis Vs. Aesthetic" reprinted in Owen Gingerich, The Eye of Heaven: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler (New York: The American Institute of Physics, 1993), pp.193-205.
Neither Copernicus nor Galileo "proved" by their day's standards of scientific demonstration that the world rotated around the sun. Rather both put forward "aesthetic" and theological reasoning that countermined common assumptions. These frameworks situated mathematical and empirical observation and gave them fundamental validity. It is a myth to state that the Copernican (and later, Galilean) systems were more "scientifically accurate" than the Ptolemaic. In fact, they were fairly identical for all intents and purposes. Gingerich (Senior Astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Chair of Harvard University's History of Science Department) used Ptolemy's system to calculate "ephemerides" (that is, daily calculations of star positions) and they were essentially correct.
Whatever one might make of the conflict between Galileo and the church, research makes it indisputable that Galileo was not putting forward some novel mathematical or scientific device that is somehow cordoned off from a supposed "Dark Age" of scientific backwardness. Whatever Galileo's advances, he made them on the back of Medieval theoreticians and mathematics. Galileo as such cannot be put forward as a figure who somehow inaugurates "scientific progress" against a "medieval" church. Whatever his own profession (and analogously one might make this claim of Descartes as well, as Etienne Gilson does) Galileo is perpetuating a line of scholastic inquiry. The scientific revolution was not possible without the Middle Ages. In fact it enacts a "certain middle ages" that now forgets itself.
[1] For this fascinating story, see Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the
Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (New York: Walker Books, 2004).
[2] Westman, “The Copernicans and the Churches,” in God & Nature 98.
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