The crime of galileo

Today we are going to discuss the trial of Galileo after he declares that the sun was the center of the universe, throwing out the theory that the earth was the center.

This got Galileo into trouble. Why? People seem to say that it's because this was at the time going against the church's teachings. Usually this is used as ammo to attack the church as it looks like they would simply try anyone who came up with a new scientific theory.

however another author had another version of the story. In this version he said the reason why Galileo was put on trial wasn't because his theory was radical. At the time other figures in the church already believed the sun theory, that Copernicus had come up with. Instead it was because Galileo put science above god, claiming that faith wasn't important.

Is this true? or is this someone trying to rewrite history to make the church seem like they aren't the bad guy.

what really happened?

I don't know if he put science above God.

I will say a couple things, though. One, he probably would have been OK had he not been such a dick about it. If he had presented a real dialogue with both sides fairly presented and hadn't openly ridiculed the Pope, he probably could have slid by (that doesn't mean the church wasn't censoring his opinion in that scenario, just they were only going to mildly censor it).

On the other hand, to say that Copernicus came up with it first and the church was OK with it isn't entirely correct. The church acknowledged that Copernicus's theory made the math much easier and was more accurate to calculate but didn't necessarily think the underlying theory was certain. At a minimum, Copernicus's book had a preface trying to diminish the consequences of his theories.

Yeah, the fact that Galileo flipped off the Pope and generally was as rude as he could possibly be add a lot to do with the trouble he got in.

The "Martyr for science against the evil catholic chuch" rhetoric is the result of nineteenth century "historians" who were more interested in selling their biases than in actually researching history.

(He did not say "E pur si muove" either. Saying THAT right after recanting his theory would likely have gotten him into trouble, possibly of the extra-crispy sort)

One thing that's important to understand is that 16th century astronomy was much more focused on prediction than description. But the thing is, before Kepler proposed elliptical orbits, most heliocentric models weren't actually that great. So you had Galileo on one side, with an incomplete model, and Cardinal Bellarmine on the other, with an peculiarly literalist approach to scripture. He was much more skeptical of the heliocentric model than many of his contemporaries in the clergy, but he happened to be more powerful than most of them at the time. Pope Urban VIII, a friend of Galileo's, suggested that the earth appeared to orbit the sun and we can pretend it does if that makes things easier, but actually it doesn't. The condition for Galileo to advocate for his theory was that he had to at least acknowledge this possibility. And Galileo's Dialogue did so, by putting the suggestion in the lines of a stupid character. (Scientific treatises could have characters with stock personality types back then, for some reason.) Dude couldn't help but stir the pot, and got put under house arrest.

So basically, Galileo was kind of a dick. He was still brilliant and shouldn't have been punished like that, but you know.

Speaking of the Keplerian model, I seem to remember that Gallileo rejected it because it was ugly compared to the Copernican model, despite the former gving far more accurate predictions of the movements of the planents...

ubergeneral said:

Today we are going to discuss the trial of Galileo after he declares that the sun was the center of the universe, throwing out the theory that the earth was the center.

This got Galileo into trouble. Why? People seem to say that it's because this was at the time going against the church's teachings. Usually this is used as ammo to attack the church as it looks like they would simply try anyone who came up with a new scientific theory.

however another author had another version of the story. In this version he said the reason why Galileo was put on trial wasn't because his theory was radical. At the time other figures in the church already believed the sun theory, that Copernicus had come up with. Instead it was because Galileo put science above god, claiming that faith wasn't important.

Is this true? or is this someone trying to rewrite history to make the church seem like they aren't the bad guy.

what really happened?

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Neither of these views is really correct. Galileo got into trouble not because he said the Earth goes round the Sun, or because he denigrated faith, but because he insisted that his model of the solar system was definitively accurate, i.e. more than just a predictive model, and he could prove it. He also claimed the ability to interpret the Bible more authoritatively than the church. Plus, of course, as others have said, he went out of his way to mock the Pope (who was sympathetic to him) and generally alienate everyone he shouldn't have.

It's also worth noting that, on the key issue, Galileo was actually wrong. He claimed that he could prove that the Earth definitely goes round the Sun because the motion of the tides was caused by the sea sloshing around as the Earth spins. This was not correct.

Most of all, though, the nineteenth-century "science versus religion" interpretation of all of this is clearly inaccurate no matter what you think of Galileo. Galileo was not merely a scientist, but also a Catholic. And the people who rejected his theory were not merely priests, but scientists. It was a debate that was internal to science and internal to Christianity, not conducted between the two of them as if on different sides.

That being said, while I'm firmly in the camp that says there's more nuances than traditionally stated, no one today would expect a proponent of a theory to have to give "equal time" to why his theory is wrong. And, just because his theory wasn't perfect doesn't mean it wasn't a better theory. He was unquestionably censored. It's just that he could have worked within that censorial framework and still published what he did, but decided to completely rail against it.

Isn't it normal for scientific journals to include a list of potential problems with their findings?

Theoretically, yes.

ParkCungHee said:

Isn't it normal for scientific journals to include a list of potential problems with their findings?

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Potential problems, sure, but not necessarily equal time. But if they don't, they're subject to ridicule, not house arrest.

The Catholic Church is understandably conservative about scientific findings that overturn established dogma, and want time for the new findings to be assimilated (and possibly found out to be wrong.) If they overturn dogma every time there's a new finding, it really destroys their credibility. So when Galileo comes along and wants to overturn dogma instantly, it makes them mad. Especially since he was a dick about it.

The Catholic Church isn't anti-science per se. They've accepted evolution, for example, for a long time, and it comes as a surprise to a lot of people who assume the Catholic Church is fundamentalist.

ParkCungHee said:

Isn't it normal for scientific journals to include a list of potential problems with their findings?

Click to expand...

dutchfire said:

Theoretically, yes.

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And in practice, a good peer review will force you to include those potential problems before you can publish it. So if you fail to include them, or put them there in a ridiculous manner (and the peer review system works), you will not be able to publish in a peer reviewed journal. And publishing somewhere else might get you painted in the crackpot corner and shunned by the scientific community.

The Galileo incident was not that different, except that science was intermingled with religion and the establishment wielded more power than today.

I am wondering how the geo-centric solar system came into place in the first place?

classical_hero said:

I am wondering how the geo-centric solar system came into place in the first place?

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Simple observation. The Earth certainly doesn't feel like it is moving and it looks like everything else moves around it.

classical_hero said:

I am wondering how the geo-centric solar system came into place in the first place?

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I can see how that conclusion might be made. Especially when the Earth appears static and yet the Sun and Moon rise and set from the same directions every day/night.

But the motion of the planets didn't fit that explanation very well.

Not when you examine them in careful detail. However, the notion that the Earth stays still and everything else revolves around it is - or was - so grounded in common sense that minor issues such as how to explain the retrograde movements of Mars were hardly enough to overturn the entire model. For the most part, the geocentric model works pretty well, which is why it endured for so long - just as, for the most part, Aristotelian physics works pretty well, which is why it endured for just as long. Both are common sense, at least from a purely terrestrial perspective. It was only as knowledge of celestial phenomena became much greater and more detailed in modern times that both of these systems were found to be increasingly weak at explaining them, and were superseded by alternatives with wider explanatory powers, i.e. heliocentrism and first Cartesian and then Newtonian physics. And these too have been superseded, or relativised, in their turn.

Even the heliocentric model has been in its turn overhauled - I don't know what Galileo or Copernicus would have made of the idea that the sun itself is just part of a galaxy, orbiting its centre, which is itself just one galaxy of many moving away from an unimaginably distant central point.

Plotinus said:

Not when you examine them in careful detail. However, the notion that the Earth stays still and everything else revolves around it is - or was - so grounded in common sense that minor issues such as how to explain the retrograde movements of Mars were hardly enough to overturn the entire model. For the most part, the geocentric model works pretty well, which is why it endured for so long - just as, for the most part, Aristotelian physics works pretty well, which is why it endured for just as long. Both are common sense, at least from a purely terrestrial perspective. It was only as knowledge of celestial phenomena became much greater and more detailed in modern times that both of these systems were found to be increasingly weak at explaining them, and were superseded by alternatives with wider explanatory powers, i.e. heliocentrism and first Cartesian and then Newtonian physics. And these too have been superseded, or relativised, in their turn.

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I really wouldn't say they have been superseded by later explanations but refined more than what was though possible, whereas geocentrism was out rightly overturned. I thin that is a big difference is that one idea was thrown out where heliocentrism was refined to a more accurate detail as we learnt more about the universe.

The idea that the sun is just one unexceptional star in a galaxy of some 300 billion and that that galaxy is one of maybe 100 billion and that the universe doesn't really have a center per se seems as distant from the Copernican-Galilean model as that model was from what preceded it.