Episode 60 Call for Questions!

[Salwinder]

It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. A number of clergy who sided with Galileo urged him not to publish until his evidence was definitive, out of fear of what might happen to him. I'm not saying their advice was correct, but their fears were certainly well-founded.

So you AGREE that Galileo was placing himself at great risk by publishing his ideas! You even admit that members of the clergy themselves warned him against it "out of fear of what might happen to him". That's my point entirely - where there exist socio-religious constraints on freedom of religious, philosophical and scientific expression, comprehensive critical appraisal is impossible. The church has applied these constraints on free thinkers for centuries - is it any wonder then that critiques of scripture and Christian theology were suppressed or absent until the modern age?

Pseudonym - your minimising of Galileo's experience (and what this meant for thinkers of the age more broadly) on the grounds that he was not much of a "people person" is very concerning.......

[Pseudonym]

That's my point entirely - where there exist socio-religious constraints on freedom of religious, philosophical and scientific expression, comprehensive critical appraisal is impossible.

You could delete "socio-religious" from this sentence and it would remain true.

The church has applied these constraints on free thinkers for centuries [...]

The church would have had no power to do so had they not been tied up with governments. Hell, governments have done (and still do today) much the same sorts of thing.

What I don't understand why some people exclusively criticise the church when other institutions with similar levels of power have always done the same thing. It wasn't until fairly recently in history that anybody in any sort of power recognised the concept of "inalienable rights". Liberty is still not universally recognised today. This is not a church problem, it's a people problem.

Having said that, I think it's entirely appropriate that the church issue apologies for things like the Galileo affair, even if they came a bit late in history.

[...] is it any wonder then that critiques of scripture and Christian theology were suppressed or absent until the modern age?

A lot of critical thinking was largely absent in Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Enlightenment. It was one of those periods in history where stuff like that happens.

Pseudonym - your minimising of Galileo's experience (and what this meant for thinkers of the age more broadly) on the grounds that he was not much of a "people person" is very concerning.......

I'm not sure how you managed to interpret it as "minimising". I was just playing "what-if" with history. It's not even that much of a stretch because, as I noted, Copernicus and his followers didn't suffer the same sorts of problems that Galileo did.

[OzAnt]

Hi Pseudonym,

Galileo believed he had a significant amount of evidence that could be best explained by heliocentrism. He also believed in heliocentrism.

The thing to remember is that, as well as being a man of science, Galileo was also a man of faith. For me, that means the only thing I can categorically say he believed in, was God. Rather than say he believed in heliocentrism, it's much more accurate to say that as a, if not the, father of modern science, what Galileo believed in is experimentation and observation. It just so happens that all of Galileo's experimentation, observation and calculation pointed to a heliocentric system.

He did not believe that the evidence that he had was absolutely 100% definitive, in the sense that he expected that heliocentrism should replace the orthodoxy of the time overnight on the strength of his results alone. (That is, he was not what today we would call a "crank".)

Sure. But this is an argument for why he's regarded as the father of modern science. It is not the nature of science to "absolutely 100% [believe]". Faith and belief stymie progress. Science makes observations and bases reality on the findings. That said, I can't see why you seek to belittle his work. He built on Conpernicus' findings (4 moons of Jupiter, etc), built improved telescopes, conducted experiments, documented all his observations, performed rigorous calculations and ultimately championed Copernicanism. Surely if he wasn't as convinced as he could be from his findings, he wouldn't have so strongly sought to publish his book at a time when he'd even agreed with the Catholic Church not to.

It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. A number of clergy who sided with Galileo urged him not to publish until his evidence was definitive, out of fear of what might happen to him. I'm not saying their advice was correct, but their fears were certainly well-founded.

Pseudonym, what do you mean by definitive? The evidence was overwhelming. That's what drove Galileo to publish his book (even after agreeing that he wouldn't). About the only way to make the evidence 100% definitive is to physically travel far enough out into space and directly observe what the planets were doing. Curiously, the closest man has come to doing this (a feat, by the way, that wouldn't have been possible if Copernicus and then Galileo hadn't published their work, thereby allowing subsequent scientists to build on their works) was by travelling to the moon. This occurred in 1969. More curiously, the Catholic Church didn't concede that the earth wasn't stationary until 1992! In other words, according to what you say, Galileo would have been best off to wait until he was 427 years old before publishing his book, "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems".

The thing of it is that if Galileo had waited until it was 100% definitive (whatever that means) before publishing his work, he simply never would have (in his own lifetime). And that's not how science works. Scientists publish their work so that other scientists can scrutinise it and then, if they don't destroy it, they build on it - and progress is the result.

It's interesting to think about what could have happened differently. The difference in treatment between Galileo and Copernicus (Copernicus' views were known in his lifetime, and he had followers after his death) may be partly due to differences in personality. Galileo probably wasn't much of a "people person".

Hummel paints a different picture of Galileo's personality:

He was a passionate, powerful character who could dominate any room or discussion. His talent and wit won a variety of illustrious friends in university, court and church circles, … At the same time his biting sarcasm against those whose arguments were vulnerable to his scientific discoveries made him some formidable enemies. Galileo thrived on debate… His professional life was spent not only in observing and calculating but also in arguing and convincing. His goal was to promote as well as develop a new scientific world view.

There is much debate on why it took six decades for the Catholic Church to move against Copernicus' works. My take on why Copernicus was treated so differently was that his book, "De revolutionibus", was published on his deathbed and that it was the first time arguments for a heliocentric system had been published. In other words, he died before he had a chance to get up the Catholic Church's nose. So whilst yes, his works were known during his lifetime, media distribution was very limited back then and it necessarily must have taken a while for the ideas in his works to propagate and gain momentum. This isn't an unreasonable assumption when you consider that, about 60 years later in 1616, the Catholic Church did issue a decree, suspending De revolutionibus until it could be corrected - along with any other works that suggested the earth moved or that the sun didn't.

I think that Galileo's biggest problem was that he, as I said, was a man of faith as well as a man of science. The church at the time was very much of the belief that the earth didn't move. The Bible taught that it was rooted in a foundation created by God. The Bible was, of course, God's inerrant and holy word. He struggled to reconcile the two. Here's how Christian Answers puts it:

The primary problem, as introduced earlier, was that Aristotle's science was going out of style; but the church was still attached to him. It could not make a distinction between Aristotle and Christian teachings; and in that era, there was no distinguishment or separation of science from philosophy. For the Church, if Aristotle was wrong, Christianity was wrong.

So, the lesson on this occasion, is not as you put it, to not mix church and state - as good advice as that might be. The lesson, it would appear on this occasion, was to not mix church and science.

Today, that same lesson would be not to mix fundamentalist church and science. Given the era in which Galileo lived in, he could not have possibly known this.

Ant

[Pseudonym]

The thing to remember is that, as well as being a man of science, Galileo was also a man of faith.

He was a true polymath in a sense which is fairly rare today. He was a natural philosopher, mathematician, engineer, astronomer and astrologer amongst many other things.

For me, that means the only thing I can categorically say he believed in, was God. Rather than say he believed in heliocentrism, it's much more accurate to say that as a, if not the, father of modern science, what Galileo believed in is experimentation and observation. It just so happens that all of Galileo's experimentation, observation and calculation pointed to a heliocentric system.

It's not without some justification that a lot of people object to the verb "to believe in". If someone asked me if I "believe in" science, I would not have an answer, but I'd raise a couple of objections to the question.

(Aside: Depending on the company I'm in, I raise similar objections to the question of whether or not I "believe in" God. Can you categorically say that Galileo didn't feel the same way, or would have had the question arisen?)

I think it's entirely correct to say that in his considered opinion, the heliocentric model was correct. In that sense, it is perfectly reasonable to say that he "believed in" it.

Sure. But this is an argument for why he's regarded as the father of modern science. It is not the nature of science to "absolutely 100% [believe]". Faith and belief stymie progress.

What evidence do you have that Galileo ever understood this distinction? After all, he didn't have the benefit of having a few centuries of philosophy of science at his disposal. He had no Karl Popper at his disposal.

That said, I can't see why you seek to belittle his work.

I don't see why you think I am. I'm a scientist. I wanted to be a physicist once, right up until the point that I discovered that undergraduate physicists have four-hour lab classes last thing on Friday afternoon. I'm very familiar with Galileo's contributions and achievements. If I'm belittling anything, it's the simplistic way in which people understand his struggles with some of the religious authorities of his day. It's not a simple case of big bad religion/authority suppressing the truth of the lone genius scientist. The whole affair was actually a huge mess right from the start.

I do think that his abrasive personality made a bad situation worse than it otherwise would have been. I don't know how many scientists you know, but I assure you that personality clashes are common. For what it's worth, I think that Caccini was an even more unpleasant character. Unlike Galileo, he was likely motivated by wilful ignorance, malice and political ambition.

Pseudonym, what do you mean by definitive? The evidence was overwhelming.

I mean that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Had things started from a blank slate, Galileo's evidence would have been sufficient. However, heliocentrism was, by the standards of the day, an extraordinary claim. The intellectual establishment had worked on the Ptolemaic system for the previous 1500 years, and so required a higher standard of evidence to unseat it.

Think of the sort of evidence that would be required today to overturn general relativity. The evidence that GR is incomplete is as, as you say, "overwhelming". However, it's been so well-tested that extraordinary evidence would be required to support any given candidate for replacement.

More curiously, the Catholic Church didn't concede that the earth wasn't stationary until 1992!

Of course you meant to say 1758. What happened in 1992 was just the formal lifting of the Inquisition's findings and a formal apology for it. Still, the church effectively conceded the point much earlier.

Hummel paints a different picture of Galileo's personality:

Sure. Let's just note that one person's forceful wit is another person's arrogant narcissist. See also: Christopher Hitchens.

There is much debate on why it took six decades for the Catholic Church to move against Copernicus' works.

One thing that is undisputed is that there was one crucial thing that happened between the time of Copernicus and Galileo which fundamentally changed the game, and that's the Reformation. Especially after the Council of Trent, the church was hyper-sensitive to any challenge to its authority, leading them to see even the smallest pieces of intellectual dissent as a virtual declaration of war, especially if there was a point of scripture involved.