Last week the New York Times carried one of those slow news, feel good, summertime stories. The recently renovated museum of the history of science in Florence was christened the Galileo Museum, honoring one of the most famous scientists of the early modern era.
Simple story, it would seem. But no, the writers for the Times (in this case Rachel Donadio) are drinking some sort of potent drug that has the effect of inducing them to put the Catholic Church in a bad light.
After cataloguing the lovely artifacts on display in the Galileo Museum, Donadio suddenly swerves: “Even today, centuries after Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the pope¹s theological watchdog, had Galileo arrested for preaching Copernicanism, the church has never quite managed to acknowledge that his heliocentric theory is correct.”
Huh? Do the folks at the Times imagine that the Catholic Church continues to hold to a geocentric theory?
No, what Donadio is doing is either grotestquely uninformed about the basic history of science—or perversely deceptive.
These days no educated person “acknowledges” Galileo’s heliocentric theory as “correct.” Galileo adopted Copernicus’s theory, which presumed lovely circular orbits, but that turns out to be wrong. Tycho Brahe painstakingly collected data about the positions of the planets in the sky, which was theorized by Johannes Kepler as eliptical rather than circular motion.
Interestingly, Kepler and Galileo corresponded, but Galileo insisted on defending Copernicus’ views. On this point, Galileo was mistaken, and not just because he did not have access to the scientific data and good arguments. He was, like many brilliant individuals, a vain and willful man.
But that’s an inconvenient truth, at least for the folks at the New York Times.
July 26th, 2010 | 4:09 pm
The Times is really going downhill. What other ostensibly serious newspaper allows such childish, one-sided editorializing in its articles on history and science? It’s like reading The Onion sometimes.
July 26th, 2010 | 5:24 pm
The Times also called the Galileo affair as a blow struck by science against religion, a view that would have horrified the devout Galileo. And incorrectly reported that Galileo had been convicted of heresy, which he hadn’t. He was under instructions to teach the Copernican theory as hypothesis rather than proven fact, and he pushed the envelope.
The Church’s position–overlooked in most modern commentaries–was that neither the heliocentric nor geocentric theory was proven. The Renaissance position on the limits of science vs. faith would seem problematical today, but the issue wasn’t scriptural literalism.
July 26th, 2010 | 8:38 pm
Scientific American, back in its better days 20 or so years ago, ran an article that actually explained what the issues were that got Galileo in trouble – it was delightfully dispassionate, kinda like one would want one’s science writing to be. Those days seem to be gone.
One of the things it pointed out was that, until Foucault’s pendulum (which was a sensation when it first was demonstrated), there wasn’t any physical evidence of heliocentrism – the argument was all based on elegance and math.
Nothing wrong with elegance and math, but that ain’t proof, or even evidence – they are pointers to look further. Galileo presented the tides as proof of the earth’s movement, and disparaged all other explanations to a point way past civility.
Sadly, I’ve never been able to locate that article since.
July 27th, 2010 | 12:48 am
And Bellarmine never had Galileo arrested for preaching Copernicanism. He was dead (1621) years before Galileo was arrested at all (1633).
July 27th, 2010 | 12:49 am
Joseph (et al.),
I think the article you are talking about is “The Galileo Affair” by Owen Gingerich from the Aug, 1982 issue (vol. 247, no. 2) of Scientific American. It is hard to find on the Internet. However, it is available in Gingerich’s book of essays, The Great Copernicus Chase and Other Adventures in Astronomical History.
I would post a copy of it but don’t know how to do so without infringing copyright laws. :(
But if the topic really interests you, then order a copy of that issue. Or … go to a library and photocopy one of their back issues.
July 27th, 2010 | 1:20 am
Ah, the wonders of the Internet!
If you are interested in reading the Gingerich article mentioned above, see here: http://www.haverford.edu/physics/course_materials/astr101a/Assignments/galileo%20affair.pdf
It was posted for a university class.
July 27th, 2010 | 2:07 am
Bellarmine may not have had Galileo “arrested,” but he did question him.
In 1616, Galileo met with Bellarmine, who basically told him to not present things as true or as facts without sufficient evidence, which is precisely what Galileo was doing.
They met and Bellarmine basically told Galileo to tone down the rhetoric. He did … for a little while.
July 27th, 2010 | 7:29 am
Even now, you can probably make a few dollars from the Galileo affair. All you have to do is make a bet with a Dawkins fan about how Galileo died.
Seriously, latter day secularists usually believe that, after his trial, Galileo was beheaded, burned, or drawn and quartered. You can probably score a quick payday by betting him that Galileo died of old age.
July 27th, 2010 | 9:43 am
Showing up this article is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but who can resist? The author of the article also apparently does not consult his own newspaper.
Cf.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/01/world/vatican-science-panel-told-by-pope-galileo-was-right.html
I googled “pope galileo” and this was the third answer returned.
July 27th, 2010 | 9:45 am
Correction: the author apparently does not read her own newspaper
July 27th, 2010 | 12:39 pm
@David, thank you for posting that link! That article is a wonderfully written account of Galileo’s controversial interactions with the Church.
I have read the details of this story many times in many different formats, but this is one of the best.
July 27th, 2010 | 1:46 pm
Your attitude of perfectly reasonable triumphalism here is entirely unearned, Dr. Reno. Galileo merely a vain and willful man, shown up by Kepler? Unlike, I suppose the paragons of Christian humility in the Vatican who took a mere *350 YEARS* to formally admit a patent error of truth and justice (virtues, may I remind you) that had done the Church no end of damage in the meantime. As if the Vatican in 1630 would have been JUST OK with an elliptical, rather than circular, theory. Galileo is one of the towering figures in the history of physics, and deservedly so (I used to study physics). One doesn’t have to be an uncritical admirer of the NYT or of scientific God-bashers to see that. Why do “conservatives” steadily ignore the beams in their own eyes while heaping scorn on the NYT’s motes? Isn’t this a pretty boring sport by now? Don’t you guys have anything really theological to do? I would have thought, given that the state of contemporary theology is pretty pitiful, it could use some real help. (I, for one, have no interest in wasting my time bothering to bash the follies of National Review, e.g., on a regular basis.)
July 27th, 2010 | 3:32 pm
HT seems to think that Galileo wasn’t exhonerated by the Church until HT’s lifetime. I suggest he read the Wikipedia article and then the Scientific American article. He might find the beam he is talking about.
Patrick asks about editorializing in the news of serious newspapers. Sadly the answer to his question is all of them. That is what makes The Onion’s satire so sharp. My own favorite, The Economist, appears to be headed down that route as well. It has been years since the Scientific American succumbed, e.g. their attack by proxy on Bjorn Lomborg’s The Sceptical Environmentalist. An interesting scientific debate might have appeared in their pages. Instead they chose sides.
July 27th, 2010 | 9:54 pm
One of the things it pointed out was that, until Foucault’s pendulum (which was a sensation when it first was demonstrated), there wasn’t any physical evidence of heliocentrism – the argument was all based on elegance and math.
This is not the case. Galileo’s observations of the phases of Venus destroyed Ptolemy’s model. Additionally, Galileo observed that the moons of Jupiter clearly orbited around the planet Jupiter. That undermined the traditional model that had every heavenly body orbiting only the earth: the earth was no longer special. With these two observations, Occam’s Razor dictated a heliocentric model.
Foucault’s pendulum was the equivalent of DNA evidence linking a killer to a crime after several witnesses already placed him at the scene of the crime.
July 28th, 2010 | 1:10 am
One more nail in the coffin of Ptolemy’s model was Henry Cavendish’s experimental proof of Newton’s law of gravity in 1798.
Newton was a mathematical genius who calculated that if there was a gravitational force that acted between masses and if the gravitational force was inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two masses, you get elliptical orbits as a result if one mass is moving fast enough relative to the other. Newton wrote down the well-known equation that gravitational force is equal to G*m1*m2 / r^2.
Cavendish proved this equation was true with ingenious, high-precision measurements of the forces exerted between massive lead balls and provided the first estimate of the then mysterious quantity G. As long as one was willing to believe that the sun was a massive body, the mystery of how other bodies could orbit the sun (or the earth for that matter) was solved.
July 28th, 2010 | 8:19 pm
[i]That undermined the traditional model that had every heavenly body orbiting only the earth: the earth was no longer special.[/i]
Mark, I find these statements problematic. For starters, according to Ptolemy, the heavenly bodies were not only orbiting the earth. They were orbiting a point, and the point was orbiting the earth. This is how retrograde motion was accounted for.
As for making the earth less special, I suppose that if by special you mean unique, this is correct. But being unique is not all that great if you are uniquely the trash reseptacle of the universe. The Aristotelian view, which I believe was still in vogue at that time, held that we were not at the center, but at the bottom. All the imperfect stuff fell to earth, while everything in the heavens was perfect. (Which is why Ptolemy used epicycles to account for not only retrograde motion, but also eliptical motion. elipses =/= perfect) Galileo’s theory, in effect elevated the earth from the bottom to being one of the heavenly bodies. If anything, it was not pride, but humility which would have motivated people to reject such a theory.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact