Bailyn's Fables: Galileo and the Church

I thought I'd start with the big one. This is the one that almost everyone was taught in primary or early secondary school. The story of how one scientist put forward a theory that disagreed with the Catholic church's beliefs, and was subsequently admonished and persecuted for it by them. It was likely one of the first times in our lives that we were made aware of this "war" between religion and science, and carried with it the moral that you should stand up for what you believe in, or against the tyranny of what you think is wrong. Fine lessons, but let's see what we can get from the truth.

A quick side note here, as there is another commonly held untruth at this point. The story sometimes goes that Galileo invented the telescope and thus was the first to gaze upon the heavens. In fact the credit of the invention should really go to one Johann/Hans Lippersheim, a German-Dutch lensmaker, in 1608, though as with so many historically significant inventions, this is up for debate. The key point however is that Galileo was not it's inventor. This is not to say he was not a great man. He contributed massively to the Scientific Revolution and deserves much of the praise thrown his way, but there is a matter of truth that must be considered.

Certainly, he may not have invented the telescope, but he made a damn few discoveries with it. Not, a further point must me made, heliocentricity, as such measurements as would be required simply wouldn't have been possible in his day. Most of his work was involved in observing sun spots, the moon's craters, moons around Jupiter, and the phases of Venus. None of these directly proved that Earth orbits the Sun, however the moons around Jupiter seemed to contradict the idea that everything was centred on the Earth, and Venus' observed phases showed that it orbited the Sun, rather than us.

Here is where the fable pulls away from truth. It is commonly taught that these findings, which were directly opposed to the Aristotle and Ptolemy geocentric models that were strongly supported by the Catholic Church, were dismissed as, well, to summarise:

Subsequently, depending on who is telling the story, Galileo kept shtum for a bit, or stood strong, the little man against the vast church.

The truth is, Galileo published his conclusions, and the Jesuits, while initially skeptical, performed their own observations and ended up confirming his findings, though they would still warn Galileo to abandon Heliocentrism, calling it "false and contrary to scripture". Galileo became popular with many in Catholicism, and indeed became friends with a man who would later become Pope Urban III.

Mind you, it's not like he was totally accepted:

"My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth."

A letter to Johannes Kepler

No, it seemed that some would never accept Galileo's word, even to the point of refusing to look in the bloody telescope to see for themselves. Nonetheless, Galileo's book circulated for several decades, with very little opposition from the church. It did however have plenty of opposition from another area. His fellow scientists.

Many attacked the theory because it opposed the deeply entrenched Aristotelean view and indeed Scripture. Far from being persecuted by the church, he was attacked by his very peers!

The story moves in back into the realm of reality later in his life however, when he published Dialogue Concerning the Chief World Systems that more or less attacked the very people who had supported him, including the now Pope Urban III, and sought to interpret passages of Scripture, something the Church felt outside the jurisdiction of a scientist, as it were. Decidedly old now, he was brought to Rome to defend himself and was placed under house arrest. He was still allowed visitors, and had a servant. He spent a lot of his time composing one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. 


So, far from the little guy against the big power story many of us know, the truth is somewhat contrary. Understand that I am not taking the side of Catholicism against science, but neither do I believe that it is right for anti-religious people to keep citing this story, when in reality it really missed a lot of the truth. I do believe it is important that the truth and only the truth be considered in this ongoing, and probably everlasting debate. It's a moral high ground kinda thing, I suppose. So, in light of the above, I might suggest an alternate moral for this fable, that even science is prone to fanaticism, and we would do well to guard against it. Your own suggestions are welcome.