Glen Davis

Check out this brief inter­view with Pro­fes­sor Lind­berg (his­to­ry of sci­ence prof at Wis­con­sin-Madi­son) Did Mar­tin Luther Get Galileo in Trou­ble?

How did the church respond to Galileo’s the­o­ry?
There was a com­mit­tee estab­lished called the Holy Office, which had the respon­si­bil­i­ty to deter­mine the truth in mat­ters of faith. Charges were lev­eled against Galileo, and so the helio­cen­tric ques­tion came before them.

We don’t know much about what went on in their con­sid­er­a­tions. But it’s impor­tant to look at the whole pic­ture. And one part of that pic­ture is that the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty is over­whelm­ing­ly opposed to Galileo. That is, the evi­dence that Galileo has is not par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful. It’s not over­pow­er­ing. He was looked on as a crack­pot by lots of sci­en­tists.

If we com­bine this pic­ture with the author­i­ty of the Catholic Church to inter­pret the Bible—and their new atten­tion to lit­er­al interpretation—it’s just clear what the answer is going to be. They’re not going to vio­late their own hermeneu­tic exeget­i­cal stan­dards in order to adopt this crack­pot minor­i­ty opin­ion of the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty.

So then he goes before a papal court. It was­n’t his sci­ence that was on tri­al, though. What was he tried for?
Obe­di­ence was the only issue in the tri­al. And he was guilty. Every­body could tell he was guilty because Galileo does­n’t just dis­cuss the pros and cons of the the­o­ry, he just advo­cates all the way. It was a blun­der on Galileo’s part.

Galileo then recants. Why?
He had two choic­es. There was the threat of impris­on­ment or he could recant. Every­body knew it was a for­mal­i­ty, so he did­n’t cost his cause any­thing to recant.

How did the the­o­ry of the sun as the cen­ter of the uni­verse final­ly get accept­ed by the church?
Once New­ton’s the­o­ry of grav­i­ta­tion came along, you had over­whelm­ing argu­ments in favor of helio­cen­trism. The church says, “Okay, now we’ve got proof, so now we will rein­ter­pret the Bible.”

By the end of the 17th cen­tu­ry, the church was on board, though Coper­ni­cus’s book stayed on the index of pro­hib­it­ed books until 1835. This geo­cen­tric mod­el remained an alba­tross around the Catholic Church’s neck.

Inter­est­ing stuff.

I just ran across a link for the Amer­i­can Sci­en­tif­ic Affil­i­a­tion: a fel­low­ship of men and women in sci­ence and dis­ci­plines that relate to sci­ence who share a com­mon fideli­ty to the Word of God and a com­mit­ment to integri­ty in the prac­tice of sci­ence.

They have an absolute­ly incred­i­ble respos­i­to­ry of arti­cles and links to resources. If you’re in the sci­ences, you need to check this out!