The Galileo Legend THOMAS LESSL
The extent to which people are mislead by the Galileo legend
first
began to dawn on me several years ago when I was teaching a
doctoral
seminar in the history of rhetoric - my own academic field.
Galileo Galilei
(1564-1642)
One day, as I was outlining some of the positive contributions made by
medieval theology to the development of modern science, a student
interrupted to ask why it was, if what I was saying were true, that
"the
Catholic Church killed all those scientists." Stunned, and not wanting
to
sound defensive, I turned the tables on the student and asked him to
please name some of these scientific martyrs. Of course he could not
name
any. To ease his embarrassment, I noted that he had probably been
misled
by popular misrepresentations of the fate of Giordano Bruno, an
apostate
Dominican who was condemned to death by the Roman Inquisition at the
turn
of the seventeenth century. Popularizers like to link Bruno with
Galileo
simply because he happened to embrace the Copernican position. But
Bruno
did not hold this position as a scientist, nor is there any evidence
linking his Copernican beliefs to his condemnation for heresy.
Although he
occasionally taught geometry, he was famous across Europe as an
itinerant
preacher of hermeticism - the pop new age religion of his day. The
heliocentric model was merely a prop for his pantheistic cosmology of
infinite worlds. While we may fault the Church officials who sent
Bruno to
the stake for cruelty, we cannot fault them for being enemies of
science.
I am aware of only one scientist who was sentenced to death by public
authorities prior to the twentieth century - when the Nazi and Soviet
governments greatly enlarged this number. That was the great chemist
Antoine Lavoisier, who was sent to the guillotine during the French
Revolution. Although the specific charges which were raised against
him by
the Terror were political rather than scientific, the anti-scientific
tendencies of the regime which condemned him are a well guarded
secret.
The science textbooks our children read make free with accusations
against
the Catholic Church over its treatment of Galileo, but we would be
hard
pressed to find any that mention the Terror's closing of the Academy
of
Science or its death sentence against France's greatest scientist.
I've always suspected that science popularizers and educators attend
selectively to every hint of conflict between science and Christianity
in
history, but completely block out the most egregious offenses against
scientific freedom perpetrated by secular ideologies. I recently
decided
to explore this suspicion in a more systematic fashion. In just a few
hours spent perusing such literature in local libraries, I was able to
accumulate 44 different accounts of the Galileo episode, many which
also
mistakenly assign scientific status to Bruno. Among these books and
articles I found only one reference to Lavoisier's fate, and one brief
note on the mistreatment of scientists by secular governments in the
twentieth century. What I did find, in the numerous discussions of the
Galileo episode that turned up, were stories having all the
recognizable
markings of popular folklore - erroneous embellishments, the omission
of
crucial details, and tendentious overgeneralizations which make
Christianity and science out to be natural enemies.
One frequent embellishment to the story is the claim that certain
clergy
refused to look through Galileo's telescope, because they thought it
bewitched. Actually these were not churchmen at all but two of
Galileo's
scientific rivals, the scholastic natural philosophers Cesare
Cremonini
and Guilio Libri, who embraced the then popular view that telescopic
observations were a superfluous amendment to the complete adequacy -
or so
they thought - of Aristotle's physical system. Ironically, the two
priests
who did look through Galileo's telescope, Frs. Clavius and
Grienberger,
were converted by the experience to Galileo's Copernican position, but
this is only mentioned in scholarly histories.
Another apocryphal embellishment is the claim that Galileo, after his
forced recantation, muttered, "Nevertheless, it does move." This
addition
may truthfully impress upon readers the strength of Galileo's
scientific
convictions, but it also gives an impression of defiance that was not
characteristic of his attitude toward the Catholic Church. Galileo,
who
remained loyal to the Church to the very end of his life - and was
even
carried to daily mass when he became too feeble to walk - clearly
understood that he had been the victim of an academic feud and that
the
Church had been drawn in on the side of his enemies only through
beguilement.
The facts that are consistently left out of this story are probably
more
critical to its misunderstanding than are the embellishments. The most
important of these is the story's failure to acknowledge the role that
academic politics played in this affair. Historians have known for
some
time that the sequence of events that eventually led to the Church's
actions against Galileo was set in motion by secular academics, not
priests, and this changes the whole complexion of the affair.
Galileo's
academic enemies had much more to lose than did the Church if the
Copernican world view turned out to be right, and this makes them the
more
plausible villains of this story. Galileo's personal correspondence
indicates that he shared this view.
Those who bear such tales also fail to mention that the judgment
against
Copernicanism came at a time when the Church was greatly preoccupied
with
the challenges of the Protestant Reformation. Related to this is the
notable fact - almost never mentioned in legendary accounts - that
Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium had been in print for nearly
seventy
years before the Church placed any restrictions on its teachings. The
Church's first formal response to the Copernican hypothesis seems to
have
been triggered by Galileo's Letter to Castelli, an apology for
Copernicanism which advocated a figurative reading of Scripture in
order
to resolve the theory's apparent conflicts with the Bible. Although
Galileo's approach to biblical interpretation was completely in
keeping
with the Catholic tradition, it had another more troubling
implication.
Galileo was asserting, in effect, that where scientific findings
conflicted with the literal sense of the Scriptures, scientists should
have the right to independently determine what the Bible means. For a
scientist to assert this was tantamount to sanctioning the private
interpretation of the Bible, a Protestant view expressly forbidden by
the
Council of Trent. Galileo had unwittingly embroiled the Copernican
question in a much larger and more complex controversy.
It is not an accident that such complicating factors as this are never
discussed in popular scientific accounts. Clearly those who tell this
story have strong ideological interests which make the maligning of
the
Christian Church attractive. A big part of this seems to be the belief
shared by such storytellers that the scientific way of life would
operate
best in a world untroubled by religious belief. In fact one of the
main
themes of the Galileo legend seems to be the idea that Christianity is
an
anti-scientific monster, now safely caged, that sought to devour
science
at the moment of its birth. This in fact is how the story is presented
in
what is perhaps the most popular treatment of science ever published,
theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time:
Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible
for
the birth of modern science. His renowned conflict with the Catholic
Church was central to his philosophy, for Galileo was one of the
first
to argue that man could hope to understand how the world works, and,
moreover, that we could do this by observing the real world.
Since the author of this passage is often compared with Einstein and
Newton in the popular press, his readers, (approximately nine million
to
date), are likely to assume that he is simply telling it like it is.
But
that conclusion would be wrong. Hawking's genius as a mathematician
and
theoretical physicist does not make him an historian of any kind.
Neither
does it lessen the temptation to succumb to a romantic legend that
seems
to lend itself to his preconceptions.
Hawking greatly overstates the degree of responsibility that Galileo
had
for the rise of modern science. While Galileo contributed some
refinements
to scientific method, enlarged the mathematical emphasis of science,
and
made important discoveries, science of the kind he practiced was not
"born" with him. What we call "modern science" is a compilation of
ideas,
techniques, philosophical assumptions, and information that
accumulated
over many centuries and drew from a multitude of cultures. Notably,
and
contrary to what Hawking suggests, pivotal contributions to its growth
were made in medieval Europe, when the Catholic Church was virtually
the
sole patron of learning. Perhaps the most notable of these
contributions
is the development of experimental method, something frequently
credited
to Galileo in popular legend. The basics of experimental design were
laid
out in the thirteenth century by the saintly Bishop of Lincoln, Robert
Grosseteste. By the time Galileo came along, four hundred years
latter,
such investigative techniques, now greatly refined, had found their
way
into universities all over Europe.
By suggesting that science sprang from the mind of Galileo, like
Athena
from the brow of Zeus, Hawking sets his readers up for his second
sweeping
claim that science, (now mythically personified in Galileo), was
opposed
by the Church because of its novel claim that "man could hope to
understand how the world works" by "observing the real world." Anyone
with
even a cursory knowledge of the relationship between Catholicism and
science in the centuries leading up to Galileo's generation, would
know
that this statement is fundamentally wrong. Science based on
observation
had been the norm in Catholic universities since the Aristotelian
revival
of the thirteenth century, and religious objections to science, which
were
much more exceptional than popularly imagined, occurred only where
science's boundaries overlapped with those of theology. This was true
in
Galileo's case as well. The Church was generally favorable to his
work.
Indeed, in 1611, after Galileo published The Starry Messenger, the
book
which reports the discoveries he made with his telescope, the Vatican
college in Rome honored him with a full day of festivities. Throughout
his
career, Galileo was befriended by numerous religious intellectuals.
The
fact that one of these was Maffeo Barberini, under whose papacy
Galileo
would latter be prosecuted, merely indicates that the Church's action
against Copernicanism was more complex than Hawking imagines.
Neither Hawking nor any of the other writers I surveyed mentions how
easy
it had been for Galileo to obtain the Church's permission to publish
his
Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems, the book which got him into
so
much trouble. The Church's generally positive attitude toward Galileo
and
his work has led scholars to conclude that the officials who decided
to
silence him probably acted under the influence of the extraordinary
political pressures I mentioned earlier. It is equally likely that
they
had also been beguiled by the persuasive manipulation of Galileo's
academic enemies. In the end, only seven of the ten Cardinals who
tried
him were willing to sign the sentence against him. After the trial it
was
a churchman, the Pope's nephew Francesco Barberini, who provided safe
haven for the elderly astronomer in the residence of the Archbishop of
Siena.
Even without such specific information as this about the circumstances
of
the Church's actions against Galileo, we would have reason to doubt
Hawking's generalizations. A singular historical incident could hardly
demonstrate claims so global as his. Moreover, to suggest that the
Catholic Church of the seventeenth century opposed science on the
basis of
its opposition to one book written by one scientist about one theory,
is
simply unreasonable. This would be like characterizing the American
government of the twentieth century as undemocratic simply because of
the
bad behavior of Joseph McCarthy. Single historical incidents seldom
support the general rule.
As an examination of the many samples I have collected will show,
Hawking
is only one of a multitude of science writers who recite such tales -
nor
is he the only eminent scientist among them. As a group they have
succumbed not only to the delusions of the Galileo legend but to the
even
more pervasive myth of the "Dark Ages," the erroneous belief that the
scientific revolution was brought about by a small handful of defiant
geniuses who led civilization out of the valley of darkness into which
it
had descended - with the coming of Christianity - a thousand years
earlier. The absurdity of what the "Dark Ages" myth supposes, never
seems
to dawn on the scientists who recite it. If medieval thought had been
dominated by religious convictions that pointedly denied the very idea
of
science, why did the scientific revolution occur in the West? On the
basis
of what Hawking seems to assume, Europe would seem to be the last
place on
earth to expect a scientific revolution.
This paradox is easily resolved once we realize that this popular
conception of the Middle Ages is simply a fiction. The events of the
seventeenth century that are collectively called the "scientific
revolution" were really products of a much longer period of
"scientific
evolution," an intellectual movement that was born in the very heart
of
medieval Europe. The science of Galileo and Newton was only possible
because the scientific thinking of Aristotle had been so warmly
received
into Christian Europe centuries before. The discovery of Aristotle's
work
and that of a number of other classical thinkers, made available to
Christians the most sophisticated scientific thinking that had been
developed up to that point in history. But rather than suppressing
this
information, as the popular legends would suggest, medieval scholars
immediately went to work building upon it. They did so because they
recognized that Greek science was especially congenial to a biblical
understandings of the world. It is not difficult to see why they would
have thought so. As the Church Fathers had taught many centuries
before,
the view of nature that is given in revelation suggests that it might
be
"read" as a kind of companion volume to Scripture - a book of God's
Works
to go along with the book of God's Word. The sudden availability of
Greek
science greatly enlarged the medievals' ability to begin this
undertaking,
and they did so with great ardor.
The absence of such a sympathetic religious framework in classical
antiquity may account for science's much shorter life span during this
period. Despite the monumental contributions of Aristotle and others,
science never enjoyed the kind of general acceptance in ancient times
that
it did in Christian Europe. Perhaps this was due to paganism's
tendency to
regard nature as a divinity. If nature were a goddess, she might be
capricious, and thus not conducive to scientific study. Worse yet, the
manipulation and probing of nature might constitute hubris, an impious
entry into secrets not meant for mere mortals. Medieval Christianity,
by
contrast, created a general framework of assumptions conducive to much
greater optimism about the prospects of scientific investigation. The
natural world that is revealed in Scripture shows itself to be both
orderly and good. Moreover, human beings are revealed to be creatures
not
only created in God's image - and thus capable, as Francis Bacon would
latter say, "of the vision of the world" - but also commanded by God
to be
stewards of nature. For Christians science came to be regarded not
only as
possible, because God had created the human intellect to comprehend
the
universe, but also a duty commanded by charity.
If the things I have said are true - and they are easily verified -
why
would Stephen Hawking and other thinkers of similar caliber propagate
such
falsehoods. Clearly we can't put this down to intellectual deficiency.
There must be another explanation. In fact I believe there are two.
The
first is simply that the Galileo legend carries the authority of
tradition
and of the scientists who tell it. When scientists report the history
of
science in textbooks and other popular literature, they are often
repeating the stories they picked up from textbooks during their own
student years. In this fashion such tales are passed down from one
generation to the next - very much in the fashion of an oral
tradition.
Hawking probably believes what he has written simply because he has
taken
in good faith the similar tales told by other writers of great repute,
such as Albert Einstein, Fred Hoyle, and Bertrand Russell. Having been
repeated many times, and always with great conviction, the legend now
has
the authority of tradition.
If scientists lack expertise in the history of science, one might ask,
why
would they want to discuss it at all? This question leads to my second
explanation of the Galileo legend, the fact that historical beliefs
play
an important role in justifying the authority that societies confer
upon
institutions. Science is not just an activity of investigation; it is
also
an institution. Complex organizational structures have been erected to
support scientific work, and scientists, as the proprietors of these
social structures, have a vested interest in sustaining them.
If we look carefully at the beginnings of the Galileo legend we can
see
how its anti-Christian posture supports these institutional interests.
The
circulation of this legend seems to have begun during the latter half
of
the nineteenth century, at the same time that scientists were
struggling
to professionalize their disciplines. In previous eras, science had
been a
solitary endeavor undertaken mostly by persons of independent means.
In
the English-speaking world these were gentlemen amateurs, noblemen or
clergy with the means to set up their own laboratories. But this
arrangement had become outmoded by the middle of the nineteenth
century.
Scientific work had grown so complex and expensive by this time that a
whole new kind of institutional structure was needed to sustain it,
and
this created a movement to push the Church out of the universities so
that
they could be remade in science's image.
Dramatic change needs dramatic justification, and the Galileo legend
provided this. By fostering the notion that the very idea of
Christianity
is opposed to science, it put a powerful rationalization in the hands
of
scientific leaders who wanted to wrest control of higher education
from
the Church. It can hardly be an accident that two of the most
influential
versions of the Galileo myth from this period are found in books by
Andrew
Dickson White and John Draper, two of the most prominent activists in
the
movement to secularize higher education. Backed by such influential
interests, it is not surprising that the Galileo episode should have
become the defining symbol of science's relationship to religion.
A broader reading of scientific history shows that Galileo's
mistreatment
by his ecclesiastical bosses was an anomaly, a momentary break in an
otherwise harmonious relationship. In fact a more complete
understanding
of the relationship between Christianity and science has suggested to
some
scholars that Christian belief may have been the leaven that made the
development of modern science possible. Modern science, after all,
emerged
in a most unlikely place, in an adolescent European culture that was
only
a few hundred years removed from barbarism. Nothing so revolutionary
ever
developed in the great civilizations of the Middle or Far East,
despite
their considerable antiquity and sophistication. The reason for this
should be quite clear. The founding assumptions of modern science, its
belief in a universe that is highly ordered and in a human mind that
was
created to reach beyond its finitude to grasp the mystery of this
order,
are premises that are secure only where monotheism has taken root.
In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that the Galileo story ought
to
be discounted altogether. It is a story that can teach Christians the
wisdom of exercising caution in the face of scientific hypotheses that
superficially might seem to challenge revelation. But removed from the
larger context of history this story promotes the misleading belief
that
Christian faith harbors a general disposition to suppress rational
inquiry. The consequences of such distortion, though hard to measure,
are
undoubtedly real. The Galileo myth sustains the widespread belief that
the
voice of the Church should never be raised in criticism of scientific
claims, and it promotes the equally perverse assumption that religious
resistance to potential abuses of scientific knowledge is simply a
mask
for obscurantism.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thomas Lessl. "The Galileo Legend." New Oxford Review (June 2000):
27-33.
This article is reprinted with permission from New Oxford Review (1069
Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706). To subscribe to the New Oxford
Review,
call 510-526-5374.
THE AUTHOR
Thomas Lessl is a professor of rhetoric at the University of Georgia.
Copyright © 2003 New Oxford Review
Paddy Hackett
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