Free Dartmouth

home

7/12/2003 06:51:00 PM | Timothy

Re: Galileo Deserved It?
Credit (or blame) Kumar's post below for stimulating these thoughts. Massing's book review of Wade Rowland's "Galileo's Mistake" is so horrible, I cannot believe it appeared in the New York Times. It contains a number of journalistic idiocies, and makes "Galileo's Mistake" look terrible, if Massing accurately reviewed it (a big "if" considering how ill-informed Massing appears to be; I cannot say for sure without having read Rowland's book whether the fault is Massing's or Rowland's or both).

Massing says that "Galileo's Mistake" contends that the traditional view of the Galileo Affair is wrong. I largely agree it was not a simple clash of 'reason' against 'faith,' but this is not a new contention. Massing apparently has no idea that Koestler and others wrote about this years ago. And he does not note the work of scholars who long meticulously analyzed the Galileo Affair. To do that would be to deprive himself of a good reason for anyone to care about this book. Massing does not tell us the most interesting things that complicate our picture of the Galileo Affair.

Massing notes that "Galileo's Mistake" makes much of the fact of the fact that Copernicus was undisturbed, while Galileo was not. Massing does tell us that part of the explanation for this could be that Copernicus dedicated his book to the Pope, and that someone added a preface to Copernicus' book which said a sun-centered system presented here was to be viewed as a mathematical hypothesis, not as a philosophical fact.

There is also this myth that Galileo proved that the Earth moved and the sun was the center of the universe. In my opinion, IT IS NOT TRUE that any rational person HAD TO believe in heliocentrism after Galileo's discoveries (e.g. the phases of venus). Galileo certainly undermined a lot of the old Aristolean cosmology and gave very good reasons for supporting a sun-centered universe (by the way, today, we don't believe the sun is the center of the universe, but only of the solar system). But the evidence is overwhelmingly compelling if you only directly compare Galileo and Ptolemy. But Massing does not mention (neither did Galileo) that there was another alternative system that was widely known, that of Tycho Brache. Brache thought the Earth was at the center, the Sun revolved around the Earth, and the other planets revolved around the Sun. Brache's system was 'inelegant' perhaps, but it was compatible with Galileo's discoveries. A lot of Jesuits followed this system.

Plus, an Earth-centered universe had a major empirical advantage: if the Earth moved, you would expect that the stars would shift when viewed from different points in the Earth's orbit. This 'stellar parallax' was not oberved, I believe, until the 1800s. In absence of this empirical evidence in Galileo's day, one would have to conclude that the Earth did not move or account for this anomoly (which would involve allowing that the universe was much, much bigger than previously thought). Now Galileo was right that the Earth moved, but it is utterly disingenous to pretend that all the evidence favored heliocentricism in his day. Interestingly, this might say a lot about why society should allow freedom of expression that seemingly contradicts scripture, even when all the evidence isn't on the scientist's side. Critics of the traditional interpretation of the Galileo Affair often forget this, and act like the Church (or society) should be able to suppress speculation and science that is not fully proven yet.

Another thing: let us not pretend that Galileo only cared about empirical matters and did not have his own hang-ups. Tycho Brache let Dutch astronomer Johannes Kepler use his miticulous observations of the orbits of Mars and other planets. From this, Kepler discovered that the path of Mars was an ellipse, not a circle. For centuries, astronomers had been fixated on the circle, and believed that all heavenly bodies travelled in circles (or circles upon circles). Ptolemy's earth centered solar system used epicycles, and future astronomers made the system ridiculously complex. But many people also forget that Copernicus ALSO used epicycles-- he STILL thought heavenly bodies travelled in a circular motions-- and as such, his system was still very complicated and is was not clearly the simple, straightforward, and clearly correct system it is often portrayed to be. Galileo went to his death believing in epicycles and circular motion. (Don't forget this if you indict Brache's geo-helio system merely because it is 'inelegant'.) Galileo specifically refused to believe Kepler when Kepler announced his discovery. So Galileo was not pure scientific saint, following empirical truth, wherever it may lead. That fault may be forgiveable, but we should not forget it when people portray Galileo as an absolute advocate of reason and fact over religious faith and superstitution.

Another thing the review does not mention: many scholars think Galileo got himself in trouble by putting the view of the Pope (that God has the power to make things appear in any way he chooses) into the mouth of the simpleton in his dialogue comparing the two world systems. Insulting the Pope is not a good way to avoid the inquisition in the 1630s.

Here is another passage from Massing which I would like to criticize: "Galileo in 1615 published his "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina," in which he argued (in Italian) that not only had the Copernican thesis been conclusively demonstrated, but that the new scientific method had shown its clear superiority over Scripture as a guide to the universe."
My recollection of "Letter" (which, I admit, I last read and wrote about almost ten years ago) is that Galileo argues that God gave us two books to read to find out about the universe: the book of nature, and the book of revelation, neither of which could contradict each other. The Bible sometimes spoke in allegory, and Galileo pointed out that scriptural passages seemed to also imply the Earth was flat. Massing's summary of "Letter" is pretty crude. My memory is that Church officials admitted the possibility of the need to revisit passages of the Bible describing physical facts, but the Church had the authority to reinterpet scripture and decide when this would take place. In absence of incontrovertable proof (see above), the Church could maintain that natural philosophers (scientists) should not be theologians. Of course, the Church got to make this determination. And the Church had accomodated themselves to the fact that the Earth was round, for example (it's another myth that Columbus discovered this; most educated people in Columbus' day thought the Earth was round). And the Church was shown to be wrong to declare it a heresy to say the Earth moves. But the Galileo Affair is far more complicated than many people make it out to be.

perma link | | 0 comments

0 Comments:

0 Comments: