Galileo Galilee's contributions to astronomy, mathematics and science are irrefutable. However, in the seventeenth century, his hypotheses caused friction with the Catholic Church, culminating in his being forced to recant his views and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Beginning with the statements of Nicholas Cusanus and reinforced by the research of Nicholas Copernicus, a discord between the Church and natural sciences began to appear. Prior to that there was little question of the authority of the Church in relation to its authority in the sciences.
Galileo was a staunch Catholic, but his views were meant to separate the views of Scripture and that of natural science in relation to what the intended outcome of both views were expected to be. This caused a schism between the theology of the Church and what scientific theories should be baselined against. Even with his eventual trial and abjuration by the Holy Roman Church, Galileo’s theories that supported a heliocentric universe had pushed the biblical views of science, of the Churches literal interpretation of the Bible to the limit and set the course for future thinkers and how natural science would evolve in light of the heavy hand of the Catholic Church.
In order to understand the differences between the natural sciences and religion, specifically the Catholic Churches view, during the time of Galileo, an understanding of the system of thought that served as the background for the Churches position, and therefore, everyone’s position, is required. In this “old world scheme”[1] Aristotle is the central focus. His view, that everything in the universe lay in plain contrast and that of natural place, stands to reason that there is a center, and that “certain things whose nature it is always to move away from the centre (sic), and others always towards the centre.”[2] The heavenly realms would continue eternal while the things of Earth would remain transitory.
This then leads to his theory that all natural bodies are made up of one of four elements, earth, water, air and fire, and that these four elements dictate their natural place; earth and water being heavier have the tendency to move down towards the center while the lighter air and fire have the tendency to move away from the center.
By his reasoning, the Earth (made of the earth element) remains stable, at the center of all things and in its natural place, the Sun (the fire element) would move away from the center. But of equal importance, is the position of the Church that even attempting to gain knowledge of nature through Scripture was not the focus. The focus was salvation. Saint Augustine even admonished his listeners who were seeking natural knowledge rather than issues of salvation. He stated that,
“There is a great deal of subtle and learned inquiry into these questions [nature]… but I have no further time to go into >these questions and discuss them, nor should they have time whom I wish to see instructed for their salvation.”[3]
This is the backdrop that formed the framework for the Catholic Church’s geocentric biblical viewpoint.
John Hardwick posits that during the Middle Ages, there was a religious harmony with natural science, this being due to imperfect knowledge that, as time marches forward, has little chance of repeating itself, “having tasted of the fruits of knowledge, the human race is cast forth from its Paradise.”[4] The Catholic Church was comfortable in its geocentric view.
The Aristotelian view clearly made sense and was easily adapted to Scripture. Aristotle’s view could be lined up with passages of Scripture, such as Joshua 10:12-13 and Psalm 93:1, both seemingly clear that the Sun moves, not the Earth. It must be noted, however, that this view was not always the position of the entire Church. According to Michael Shanks, there are examples of Aristotle’s views of natural philosophy that were forbidden in Paris in 1210 and 1215 and that while “churchmen acting in their official capacities did issue these condemnations, it is misleading to say that “the Church” did so, for this seems to imply that they were valid for all of Christendom.”[5] This view is added to by Professor Mauricio Nieto, who states that men with marked spirituality such as
Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Bacon, Descartes, all the heroes of that supposed scientific revolution, were profoundly religious and in most cases their works are rendered meaningless without their theological conceptions of the universe.[6]
Scripture and Science
But one of the common mistakes man makes is to take Scripture out of context. For example, following Joshua’s statement in verses 12 and 13. But by leaving out verse 14, it’s easy to see how the Church could form a basis for a geocentric viewpoint. But in context Joshua is letting it be known that the Sun and Moon stopped only on that day, through the intervention of God, but that there never will be another day like it. It was a one-time occurrence, not a basis for a geocentric view.
But many in the Church disagreed.
Cardinal Robert Bellarmine and John Calvin were two such people who believed that the Bible plainly proved that the Earth is immovable and at the center supporting the Aristotelian view and that there was no “true demonstration that the sun was in the center of the universe and the earth in the third sphere, and that the sun did not travel around the earth but the earth circled the sun…”[7]
In 1440, German Cardinal Nicholas of Cusanus, a self-taught theologian and philosopher, wrote “De docta ignorantia: On Learned Ignorance” that addressed what were considered the four traditional realities of Christian thought, that of God, the natural universe, Christ and human beings. Clyde Lee Miller points out that Cusanus believed that,
…the natural universe is characterized by change or motion; it is not static in time and space. But finite change and >motion, ontologically speaking, are also matters of more and less and have no fixed maximum or minimum.[8]
This unconventional idea, that there is no point in the universe that can be considered the center, but that man, regardless of his location be it on Earth, the Sun, or star, will always regard himself as being at the center of existence. This completely denies the Aristotelian view held by the Church. Cusanus makes the comparison by stating that, “We are like a man in a boat sailing with the stream, who does not know that the water is flowing, and who cannot see the banks; how is he to discover whether the boat is moving?”[9] This caused a disruption in the whole geocentric position and would only fuel the fire of what was yet to come, namely, Nicholas Copernicus.
Copernicus used emerging technology of the Scientific Revolution era and presented his hypotheses of a heliocentric understanding of our solar system. He knew, however, the implications these hypotheses would have in terms of the Churches Aristotelian position, and initially presented an anonymous treatise and then, at the end of his life, released “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies” in 1543.
Copernicus presented his ideas as mathematical hypothesis, and according to Professor Merry E. Weisner-Hanks, “not because he had physical proof, but because it was far simpler that Ptolemy’s system in terms of the geometry involved in calculating planetary motion.”[10] This is crucial to understand, that Copernicus approached his research from a mathematical viewpoint and eventually others, such as Johann Kepler and Galileo, found geometrical harmony in Copernicus’ hypotheses.
In 1514 Copernicus wrote the Commentarious which outlined his hypotheses in the form of the following seven theories; that planets do not revolve around a single fixed point, that the Earth is at the center of the orbit of the moon, the sun is the center of the universe (all bodies revolve around it), the distance between the Earth and Sun is small compared to the distance of the stars from the Sun, stars do not move, and only appear to because the Earth moves, the Earth moves in a sphere around the Sun, and finally the Earth’s orbit around the Sun causes the planets to orbit in the opposite direction.[11]
Copernicus dedicated his “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies” to Pope Paul III, possibly to make the Churches reception of it more palatable, however, the Church banned the book in May of 1616; seventy three years after Copernicus died. The reason being that there were flaws in Copernicus’ theories and they were not fully formed. That being the case, the Church was not threatened by his work, that is, until Galileo began publishing his views of a heliocentric solar system, using Copernicus’ theories as his framework.
Galileo was a student of mathematics, philosophy and physics, and was also a devout Catholic. Until his learning of a new “looking glass” and his subsequent construction of his own telescope, Galileo still taught the geocentric methods of astronomy, even though he regarded it is inadequate.[12] This would however change when he was able to view the moons of Jupiter and subsequently published The Sidreal Messenger, which presented that four moons orbited Jupiter, substantiating the claims of Copernicus that it was possible for a an object to orbit one thing while that thing orbited another.
David B. Wilson points out that the “existence of Jupiter’s moons settled the matter, because now even an earth-centered universe would possess an instance of this peculiar arrangement.”[13] Galileo also discovered sun-spots and phases of Venus, but the Aristotelian astronomers of his day refused to even see for themselves, using Galileo’s telescope, the proof against their stubborn viewpoint. Galileo wrote to Father Benedetto Castelli, a Montecassino monk and a disciple of Galileo, stating that in the face of these discoveries, “in order to convince these obdurate men, who are out for the vain approval of the stupid vulgar, it would not be enough even if the stars came down to earth to bring witness about themselves.”[14]
Galileo was again a devout Catholic, and as such he held to the belief that Holy Scripture had the sole purpose of salvation and that the literal interpretation of Scripture should not be taken into account unless that interpretation is based on and pertains to faith, morals and salvation. Galileo states that,
For it seems reasonable to deduce, that whenever Scripture has had occasion to speak about matters of natural science…Scripture has not hesitated to veil some of its most important statements, attributing to God himself qualities contrary to his very essence, solely in order to be accessible to popular understanding.[15]
Galileo clarifies this by adding that,
…these things has nothing to do with the primary intention of Holy Writ, namely divine worship and the salvation of >souls, and matters far removed from the understanding of the masses. This being the case, it seems to me that the >starting point in disputes concerning problems in natural science should not be the authority of scriptural texts, but the >experience of the senses and necessary demonstrations.[16]
While this seemed like a very logical thought pattern, it was also a very dangerous one in the seventeenth century. The ongoing controversies between Protestants and Catholics on the interpretation of Scripture made making interpretations of Scripture privately, as Galileo did, a major factor in condemnations against those doing so.
The Council of Trent
The Catholic viewpoint of a centralized authority was an essential factor in the balance between the natural sciences and religion. The Church believed that Protestantism would only fragment the Christian belief system. To combat this view, the Church brought together the Council of Trent, from 1545 to 1563, as an effort to correct this fragmentation. The Council of Trent concluded that “Catholicism affirmed the validity of tradition, branding as heretical any deviation from the unanimous agreement of the Church Fathers over the centuries. Among the points they had agreed upon were that the sun moved and that the earth did not.”[17]
In 1616 Cardinal Robert Bellarmine concluded that the Council of Trent’s position in disagreement of Galileo’s accommodation theory of Bible interpretation as valid and that the hypotheses of Copernicanism indeed would undermine the authority of the church’s traditional biblical interpretations.[18]
When Pope Urban VIII became the supreme pontiff, Galileo found an opportunity to present his Copernican theories to the liberal Pope who had a keen interest in the sciences and a fondness for Galileo himself. However, this did not turn out as well as Galileo had expected, when he went to Rome and met with Urban VIII and was unable to get the pontiff to remove the ban on the Copernican theory.
This meeting led to Galileo producing the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which ultimately put him in a very precarious position as a Catholic and scientist. Galileo would be summoned before the Inquisition in 1633. However, in regards to standard inquisition question, Galileo was not put in jail or tortured, in fact, the Inquisition went on to ‘warn” him by saying, “And to the end that this thy grave error and transgression remain not entirely unpunished, and that thou mayst be more cautious in the future, and an example to others to abstain from and avoid similar offences…”[19] Galileo was put on house arrest, his Dialogues were put on the prohibited works list, and required for three years to recites the Seven Penitential Psalms.
The culmination of Galileo’s trial, arrest and force recant of his positions in his Dialogues brings about the idea that the natural sciences and religion had no place for each other. However, John Heilbron points out that “The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and probably all, other institutions.”[20]
It is also clear that if anything, scientists of the seventeenth century were of the belief that Scripture played an important role in that it showed God’s providence to allow man to be saved by His grace, but also that it provided the window for the humble man to understand things that the Bible purposefully left to out inquisitive minds. That leaves us with the important question of has science and religion come to terms with each other. In the seventeenth century it was a process that was beginning, but centuries of discovery, increases in technology and the continual inquisitive mind of man, has brought religion and science closer together than ever before.
Citations:
[1] John Charleton Hardwick, Religion and Science: From Galileo to Bergson (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1920), Kindle Edition
[2] Giora Hon and Bernard R. Goldstein, “What Keeps the Earth in Its Place? The Concept of Stability in Plato and Aristotle.” Centaurus 50, no. 4 (2008), 309.
[3] George V. Coyne, “Science Meets Biblical Exegesis in the Galileo Affair.” Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science (2013), 223.
[4] Hardwick, Religion and Science: From Galileo to Bergson, Kindle Edition
[5] Ronald L. Numbers, Galileo Goes To Jail And Other Myths About Science And Religion. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 24.
[6] Mauricio Nieto, interview by Franklin Gamwell. Rethinking the Relation between Science and Religion: Some Epistemological and Political Implications (January 1, 2015), 259.
[7] Bellarmine, Robert. “Modern History Sourcebook: Letter on Galileo’s Theories, 1615” Fordham University. (January 1999), http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1615bellarmine-letter.asp.
[8] Miller, Clyde Lee. “Cusanus, Nicolaus [Nicolas of Cusa].” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (July 10, 2009), accessed October 1, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cusanus/.
[9] Hardwick, Religion and Science: From Galileo to Bergson, Kindle Edition
[10] Merry E. Weisner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe 1450-1789. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 376.
[11] Nicholas Copernicus, The Commentariolus, accessed October 8, 2015, http://dbanach.com/copernicus-commentarilous.htm.
[12] Hardwick, Religion and Science: From Galileo to Bergson, Kindle Edition
[13] David B. Wilson, “Galileo’s Religion Versus the Church’s Science? Rethinking the History of Science and Religion.” Physics in Perspective, 1999, 73.
[14]Giogio De Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 14.
[15] Galileo Galilei, Selected Writings. Translated by William R. Sheea, & Mark Davie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Kindle Edition.
[16] Ibid., Kindle Edition.
[17] Wilson, Galileo’s Religion Versus the Church’s Science? Rethinking the History of Science and Religion, 68.
[18] Ibid., 80.
[19] Tribunal of the Supreme Inquisition, “Modern History Sourcebook: The Crime of Galileo: Indictment and Abjuration of 1633.” Fordham University. (1999), accessed September 10, 2015, http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1630galileo.asp.
[20] Numbers, Galileo Goes To Jail And Other Myths About Science And Religion, 21.