Humanities & Classics 1002
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Renaissance Forum
Humanities & Classics 1002 |
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In Reply to: Galileo and Stubborn people posted by Alissa Henry on January 28, 1999 at 16:25:20:
I can promise you that the Catholic Church was quite justified in holding off on Heliocentrism and Galileo was not nearly so right as popular history would have you believe. The case is full of twists and turns, backstabbing, and poor science.
Did you know Galileo used tided as one of his proofs that the earth rotated.
He thought that it could be explained as the water sloshing back and forth due to the earths rotation. He also had orbits being perfect circles making his model no better than Tycho's Geocentric model, which had the support of Galileo's enemy's. (Jesuit astronomers he ticked off) and didn't contradict literal scripture.. Also the lack of a detectable parrallax (shift in star positions) THE ONE thing that would prove heliocentrism was not detectable until around 1840.
Of course I have to save something for the required post but plot twists abound and mistakes were made by both sides, but The Catholic Church not accepting Heliocentrism was perfectly scientifically valid!!!!!!! Similar skepticism would be expressed by the scientific community today for any new idea that was so poorly backed up (which means skeptics usually get proven wrong eventually)!
As far as not getting around to pardoning Him, well I don't know, but it was hardly a pressing issue, besides Catholics were always able to believe in heliocentrism at the time of Galileo though they couldn't accept it as a proven fact and try to change scripture interpretation. Besides I don't see the protestants saying they were wrong either, If anything the Catholic Church was the most right by simply saying that there wasn't sufficient evidence for it!!!
The fact he was arrested had more to do with pope urban VIII being tricked into thinking Galileo betrayed him rather than theological objections! Galileo was arrested for political reasons not scientific, note he had his book approved by several bishops before it was recalled.
Of course half of the powerful Catholics were against Heliocentrism but alot were for it too including the pope at the time (although he was more neutral)
People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the
firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all
systems is of course the very best. This fool [or 'man'] wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but
sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth."
- Martin Luther, Table Talk
"Those who assert that 'the earth moves and
turns'...[are] motivated by 'a spirit of
bitterness, contradiction, and faultfinding;'
possessed by the devil, they aimed 'to pervert
the order of nature.'"
- John Calvin, sermon no. 8 on 1st Corinthians, 677, cited in John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait by
William J. Bouwsma (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), A. 72