It started with the telescope — for Galileo, at least. A couple of lenses together in alignment — an idea devised in the first years of the 16th century — allowed the astronomer and mathematician Galileo to stare at the face of the Moon, noting that its surface is maybe not that radically different than Earth’s. The center of everything, the divinely privledged Earth, was perhaps less special than one might expect in the church-dominated Renaissance. Both the Earth and the Moon bear the same scars. And then there was Jupiter with its Moons, too, also made visible. Galileo could now see a planetary system in action, how it might be possible for a planet in motion to have other objects in motion around it: noting stationary. In the words of Kepler’s friend Baron Wakher, “Is it true? Is it really true that he has found stars orbiting around stars?” It was, and in due time it would find Galileo on trial, beginning on this day in 1633.Copernicus had theorized a heliocentric view of the heavens long before Galileo came on the scene but, at best, his ideas were considered to be within the realm of abstract math. They had little bearing on the real, physical world that g-d created. Copernicus and his followers were regarded at the time of Galileo as “men of no intellect, and little better than absolute fools,” he wrote in 1610. Galileo’s hope was that the telescope and the newfound evidence it provided for a heliocentric view would change everything. How naive it was, thinking proof matters. It did, eventually, matter but in the meantime scholars and clergy tended to ignore the telescope, refuse to look through it — after all, why look for answers when you already have them? — or look through it and claim to see nothing.Francesco Sizi, a young religious fanatic, argued in a pamphlet that any planets seen by the telescope beyond seven — seven heavens, seven days of creation, seven mortal sins, etc. — were an illusion.Then, Galileo discovered that Venus had phases — it changed in position in relation to the Sun, not the Earth. Surely, the Sun couldn’t be in orbit around both planets. Not only physically incorrect, but any idea that the Earth could be unspecial in any respect, is wrong based on the Bible. This should have be incontrovertable truth of heliocentricity, yet the response was yet more Bible-throwing. Exasperated, Galileo wrote, “Let us only be concerned with gaining knowledge for ourselves, and let us find therin our consoloation.” A nice idea, but what is knowledge unshared, or unpropogated.Kepler wrote: “Be of good cheer, Galileo, and come out publicly. If I judge correctly, there are only a few of the distinguised mathematicians of Europe who would part company with us, so great is the power of truth.” Galileo would bring his discoveries to the people (not that he thought the people at large were anything but “vulgar,” but that there exists an “open ruling class” of intellectuals-in-wait). He would write in the vernacular — the people’s language, rather than Latin — and he would skip over the scholarly classes and their approval.Then, in 1613, published a pamphlet called Letters On the Solar Spots. It was balls-out Copernican. Any ambiguity was gone; where there had been wiggle room in Galileo’s prior pronouncements, and he’d even found some love from the Jesuits, the discovery of sun spots and, thus, of a rotating Sun, went directly against the scripture. The monks went rabid against him. After Galileo went to Rome to argue for his ideas, he was kicked down, and a decree of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum declared that the ideas of heliocentrism were “contrary to Holy Scripture.”Galileo backed off. He wasn’t a big enemy of the church at this point, still. But in 1632 he published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, an even-handed approach to arguments for and against heliocentrism. Mostly it argued for the ideas of Copernicus, transparently so. At the time, the text even had approval from Galileo’s pal, Pope Urban VIII, who had no idea what was coming. In his book, The Crimes of Galileo, Giorgio De Santillana identifies Urban VIII as a “casualty” of the momentum of scientific thought. The task he had given to Galileo to write an even-handed account of heliocentrism is much like the task of writing an even-handed account of global warming. The arguments on either side don’t add up to zero, not even close.Science is not in the business of suggesting ideas for philosophical interpretation. Or not anymore, at least. Urban was, in fact, the pivoting point in the history of science from science being a tool of the philosophers, a branch of philosophy really, to being its own independent inquiry. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems did not add up to zero, and on the losing side was Urban and the church. And, what’s worse, Galileo had unambiguously — but perhaps unintentionally — placed Urban himself within the text, as a fool and simpleton.Galileo was ordered to come to Rome to stand trial. He arrived exactly 379 years ago. He was “persuaded” — the inquisition was very good at persuation — to admit that his text had been arguing for heliocentrism and for the ideas of the “fool” Copernicus. He was sentenced to house arrest, where he spent the rest of his life, and his Dialogue was banned.It took until 1992 for the Catholic church to formally regret its errors.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
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