Galileo's Mistake by Wade Rowland

Author:Wade Rowland [Rowland, Wade]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62872-242-0
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2011-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

• The Sun is the center of the world and hence immovable of local motion.

• The Earth is not the center of the world, or immovable, but moves according to the whole of itself, also with a diurnal motion.

The advisers found the first proposition to be “foolish and philosophically and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrine of the Holy Scripture in many passages, both in their literal meaning and according to the general interpretation of the Fathers and Doctors.” The second proposition was declared to be deserving of “the same censure in philosophy and, as regards theological truth, to be at least erroneous in faith.” Galileo was not mentioned.

To those in the know within the Church, this had been a foregone conclusion. In terms of Aristotelian physics, to which Dominicans and Jesuits alike subscribed, the movement of the Earth was indeed an absurd idea. This was true for a host of common-sense reasons that boiled down to the overriding fact that there seemed to be no sensory evidence to support the idea and much to deny it. And if the movement of the Earth was not a demonstrated truth, there was no need to question the existing interpretation of Scripture, which automatically put the proposition of the Earth’s motion in the category of being contrary to Scripture and thus heretical.

Clearly, the climate was not right for Galileo or for Copernican-ism. It was a period of extraordinary sensitivity regarding questions of scriptural interpretation and Church authority, and the Church’s historically tolerant attitude toward science had been set aside in favor of what were seen as questions of survival. To the committee of consultants it would have seemed that there was little difference between the Protestant reformers’ demand that individuals be allowed to interpret the Bible in their own way, and Galileo’s insistence that Scripture be reinterpreted to be in accord with the (still highly speculative) Copernican hypothesis. It was a storm many at the highest levels believed would blow over, probably as a result of more complete confirmation of the movement of the Earth. But in the meantime it would be a wise man who would keep his head down.

In any case the advisers in their blanket condemnation seem to have gone too far even for the Holy Office. It issued no formal condemnation of Copernicus or Galileo. Instead, it took two steps that might be seen as conciliatory in the circumstances. The first was to ask the Vatican’s senior theologian, Cardinal Bellarmine, to have a private talk with Galileo and order him to stop proselytizing his Copernican views. The exact content and circumstances of this warning are matters of great controversy among historians and were to have a grave impact at the time of Galileo’s trial eighteen years later.

The second development arising out of the report of the consultants was a decree issued by the Congregation of the Index, the official Catholic board of censors. This was by no means as serious as a ruling by the Holy Office, but it was nonetheless significant.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.