Did the Church Persecute Galileo? A Discussion of Science & Faith, Part 5

by | May 7, 2012 | Culture, Science | 0 comments

(This is Part 5 in a series on the history behind the story of Galileo’s persecution by the church. To start at the beginning of the series, click here)

Today’s installment of the history of Galileo and his run in with the church is especially applicable to how we think through debates in our current day. When we encounter different people, and different groups of people, saying things about science, evidence, and the Bible, it will help us to step back and remember that behind every lecture and every piece of writing are people. The issue is never only about ideas. We frequently act and talk as if it were, but in reality, these are human beings writing, with the whole package of what it means to be human affecting everything they write. No one, not even a scientist, is simply a Google search engine trolling the cosmos on a binary-logic guided search for information. We have emotions, pasts, hopes and dreams, grudges, salaries, desire for fame, pride, and all sorts of other things that go into what we look for and how we report what we find. And we also have some perceived audience who we intend to persuade, refute, or bolster. It’s not that there is no one who ever reports what they find truly, but frankly, I wish there would be more candidness about all this from the Scientific community.  

Kirsten Birkett explains how this worked out in Galileo’s day:

 No debate is ever conducted entirely on the basis of high ideals. It is rare to find arguments decided on intellectual matters alone. The story of opposition to Galileo moves now from theoretical matters into the murkier, though far more intriguing, waters of academic infighting. “Old science v new science” had a human element. Galileo was not merely challenging ideas; he was challenging the people who held those ideas, and people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were no less self-interested or status-conscious than they are now. This reality of human nature, though it takes some of the lofty ring out of the story, was probably one of the biggest obstacles to acceptance of Copernican theory. Astronomers, my dear chap, do not do physics.

Astronomers in the sixteenth century were mere mathematicians, and that was an insult. As we have seen, mathematics was not thought of as anything to do with the real world. Consequently, astronomy was not about reality. It was about mathematical calculations. Astronomers created tables and star charts which would enable people to know where the planets were in the sky at any time, and draw up astrological predictions. In his lifetime, Copernicus was best known for his assistance in reforming the calendar. No one thought that astronomers really knew how the universe worked. Imagine a computer program which has dates of previous eclipses fed in, and an algorithm for calculating from that data when future eclipses will be. It can tell you the answer, but it tells you nothing about what is really happening in an eclipse. Astronomers were like that. They came up with answers—they didn’t know anything about what really happened in the physical universe. That was the domain of the natural philosophers. The disciplinary difference was reflected in position and salary. Astronomers were the lowest of the low in universities. There was no such thing as a doctorate in astronomy in Italian universities—it was only taught at an undergraduate level. In fact, most astronomers also studied medicine in the hope of gaining more money and status. Astronomers were mere calculators—not real intellectuals at all.

Galileo Galilei was one of this group. He was the son of a court musician, and though he studied medicine at his father’s wish he never completed his degree. His interest was always mathematics, which he had himself taught outside the regular university curriculum. On his own he worked on physics and hydrostatic problems, and gave private lessons in math. Amongst other things he lectured on the geometry of Dante’s hell until he obtained his first position as a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Pisa. He later moved to be Professor of Mathematics at the university of Padua. He continued giving private lessons, developing his own ideas based on Archimedes rather than Aristotle. He wrote a treatise on fortifications; invented a horse-driven pump, a military compass, and a thermometer; experimented with the pendulum, observed the supernova of 1604, and developed theories on hydrostatics and projectiles. Yet he remained, overall, a low-status intellectual on a low salary.

Galileo could not but be intensely irritated by this situation. He was a brilliant mathematician, with an international reputation for his observations and inventions. He had what he thought sound theories about physics, yet he was still not allowed to be thought of, or called, a ‘philosopher’. It was more than a title, as he well knew—without it, he was simply not allowed to contribute to discussions about the way the world actually is. He wanted to be taken seriously as a theorist and an intellectual. In other words, he wanted to change, single-handedly, the disciplinary boundaries that had been in place for centuries. It is some testimony to his force of personality and entrepreneurial ability that to a certain extent he succeeded—but at the cost of pushing people very hard, with its subsequent disastrous consequences for himself.