Scientism and the Galileo myth. Another example of 'The Science' and its mendacity and propaganda.

The Religion of The Science, or Scientism, does not suffer competitors or doubts.

(Galileo (1564-1642), facing the inquistion)

The Scream

We have all heard the story of Galileo from the early 17^th century.  The honest, independent, objective, ‘scientist’, trying to drag the superstitious post-medieval world into light and knowledge.  Attacked, tortured, and demonised by the Catholic inquisition for ‘proving’ that the Sun was the centre of our solar system and the true object of worship.  His truths ignored due to Biblical ignorance and rank stupidity.  Lesser mortals, debased by religion, unable to comprehend his proofs and genius, refused to enter the door of science he was opening, closing it.  The hairshirt wearing, idol-worshipping, cowering and despairing Church with its unclean, unkept, illiterate monks had declared war on ‘The Science’.  We all know this to be true.  Teacher say, TV say, books say, ‘The Science’ say.  Twas the Dark Ages before the ‘Enlightenment’.  

From supposedly his own lips, Galileo Galilei, before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, 22 June 1633 uttered:

“Whereas . . . I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, namely of having held and believed that the sun is the centre of the world and motionless and the earth is not the centre and moves; therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of Your Eminences and every faithful Christian this vehement suspicion, rightly conceived against me, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned errors and heresies.” (Quoted in Maurice A Finocchiaro, ed., Texts from The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History, trans. Maurice A Finocchiaro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 292)

This recantation is supported by a letter, dictated before he died, in which he admits that there was no proof of Copernicanism (reproduced at the end of the post).  If the recantation was real or simply acted only Galileo knows.  But the truth is Galileo was never accosted, tortured, beaten or even demonised for his views.  In fact, he lived a long, salubrious life, entirely funded by the de Medici’s and the Church. 

The Myths

According to our modern education hagiography, the following is ‘true’ about Galilei Galileo:

1.     Proved heliocentricity (it took some 200 hundred years after Galileo, before some proofs were offered, namely stellar parallax and light aberration which can also be explained by the Tychonic model, as covered in other posts)

2.     Invented the telescope

3.     Discovered Sunspots

4.     Identified comets

5.     Dropped weights from the leaning tower of Pisa proving the ‘law’ of accelerated gravity

6.     Invented the incline plane to prove that an object falling down an incline will roll up an incline for the same distance as the declination

7.     Discovered the important properties of a pendulum

8.     Based on the pendulum discovered time keeping

9.     Was the first to push ‘experimental science’

Busy guy.  Except that none of the above is true (Kuhn, p. 10).  Galileo did not invent the telescope and his customised production was largely inferior to that of Kepler’s.  He did not prove heliocentricity whatsoever (more below).  It is unlikely he performed the weight dropping experiment, nor did he discover the attributes of a swinging pendulum, the incline motion of an object proceeding from a declination; nor did he uncover secrets leading to time keeping or navigation. 

Christopher Scheiner discovered Sunspots.  Jesuits long before Galileo had traced and explained the life cycle of comets, contrary to Galileo’s claim that they were ephemeral.  Scientific experimentation using defined methods dates to at least the 12^th century.  Galileo was the same character who yelled and pounded his desk that the moon had an atmosphere. It doesn’t and if you landed on it, you wouldn’t survive more than 10 minutes due to radiation exposure.

Regarding the fictitious Tower of Pisa-weight dropping, Galileo said that the heavier object fell fastest in contravention of the supposed ‘law’ attributed to him:

“Experience shows….in the beginning of its motion the wood is carried more rapidly than the lead; but a little later the motion of the lead if so accelerated that it leaves the wood behind…I have often made a test of this.”  (Lane Cooper, Aristotle, Galileo, and the Tower of Pisa, 1935)

‘The Science’ claims that Galileo invented the law of accelerate gravity or the equation d = ½ g (t²) + v*t, where d = distance, g = gravity, t = time and v = velocity.  He didn’t.  Observations date back to the 6^th century with Philoponus and include many experiments from the 16^th century, including one from Simon Stevin from the Tower at Pisa in 1586.  There is no evidence that Galileo performed any such experiment at Pisa, though he claims to have done so many times.  If he had bothered, he would not have written the above. 

Shoulders of giants

Galileo was born in the late 16^th century and performed his work during the early 17^th.  He was an educated man and much of what he ‘discovered’ was already known.  In fact, he was taught about objects, motions, pendulums, and time.  He did not invent any of these concepts.  Yet as with so many – Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and countless other ‘great scientists’-- Galileo never bothered to reference the work, nor the efforts of others.  As with Einstein, you won’t find more than a few tangential attributions by Galileo to those who did the hard work of experimentation, or who discovered the theorem in question. 

Galileo admits the paucity of his experimentation, and like Einstein was more interested in philosophy and abstractions than actual proof:

“…in order to demonstrate to my opponents, the truths of my conclusions, I have been forced to demonstrate them by a variety of experiments, though to satisfy myself alone I have never felt it necessary to make many.” (J.H. Randall, The Making of the Modern Mind, 1976, p. 235)

There are little extant proofs which confirm that Galileo did much in the way of mechanical experimentation. 

The context of heliocentricity

It is necessary to put the Galileo myth in the context of its era.  The Protestant revolt, beginning in 1517, had sundered Western Christendom in two.  State powers viewed the Protestant church as a convenient entity to subsume into the secular political structures.  The ‘reformation’ was more about national power and control than about religion.  Catholic dogmas and received wisdom were under attack in every sphere.  In many countries it was against the law to be Catholic.  The Church had been forced to retreat from much of northern Europe and felt itself surrounded by the heresy to the north, and the Muslims to the east and south.  The early 17^th century was a time of flux and real danger.  The Church had little interest in more internal convulsions generated by ‘science’. 

We can put this era of Galileo and heliocentricity into perspective:

1517- The Protestant revolt spreads across much of northern and central Europe significantly reducing Church power and prestige.

1543 — The Catholic Copernicus publishes On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, which proposes a heliocentric model of the solar system to replace the traditional geocentrism of Ptolemy and Aristotle.  No actual mechanical, observational proofs are provided.  The Protestant Kepler supplies much need mathematical support circa 1600.

1609 — Galileo observes sunspots, mountains on the moon, four moons of Jupiter, and the phases of Venus using his own telescope.  He publishes his observations in The Starry Night (1610).  From his data, particularly the full phase of Venus (placing it in orbit around the Sun), Galileo infers real support for the Copernican theory.

1615 — Galileo writes a theological defence of his work, the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, arguing that Scriptural language is accommodated to human perspective and nonliteral; thus, scientific knowledge is best informed by ‘natural demonstration.’

1616 — The Holy Office of the Inquisition, in response to Galileo’s critics and to his public campaign for Copernicanism, brings Galileo to Rome where he is privately interviewed by Cardinal Bellarmine and instructed to abandon the doctrine.  The idea of Earth’s movement is condemned and, On the Revolutions, ‘suspended until corrected.’

1624 — Galileo gains approval from the newly elected Pope and good friend Urban VIII, to write a neutral treatise on the Copernican issue.  When published, Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (1632) clearly is not neutral, but a strong defence of heliocentrism.  He also publishes many pamphlets mocking his ‘enemies’ and calling Pope Urban VIII amongst many others, a simpleton. 

1633 — The Commissar of the Holy Office puts Galileo on trial, seeking a confession that he had violated a 1616 injunction to teach Copernicanism.  Only a partial confession is obtained; in June 1633 Galileo is found guilty by ‘vehement suspicion’ of heresy and ordered to recant (abjure).  He is sentenced to permanent house arrest in Florence.

That is the bare outline of Galileo and his ‘affair’.  It was a complex and dynamic era which negates a simple interpretation of Galileo and this conflict.  Galileo was never tortured, imprisoned, beaten nor even treated harshly.  He was financed and then pensioned by the Church and before his conflict with the Church, had enjoyed 2 days of festivities in his honour, in Rome.  Galileo created his own difficulty, never providing real proof, dabbling incessantly in political discourse, and destroying relationships with his own immature character. 

Heliocentricity

We can pick heliocentricity as one example of Galileo’s less than honest career.  He supplied 3 proofs to the Catholic Church that the Earth moved through the ether, though he did not disclose the speed or velocity of said motion:

1.     Tidal movements (Jesuit astronomers long before Galileo had proven that tides result from gravitational and universal forces)

2.     The orbit of Jupiter’s moons (this ‘law’ ignores other forces which keep planets in orbiting alignment and does not prove heliocentricity, but merely confirms aspects of gravitational attraction)

3.     The phases of Venus (can be explained by the Tychonic model)

None of the above are valid proofs of heliocentricity.  Take the phases of Venus which is usually the poster-boy for heliocentric proof.  Astronomer Gerardus Bouw notes:

“Even astronomers and historians who should know better claim that Galileo’s discovery that Venus exhibits moon-like phases disproved the Ptolemaic model. All that Galileo’s observations actually meant insofar as the Ptolemaic model was concerned, was that the radii of the epicycles were much larger than had previously been suspected; and all that Kepler’s elliptical orbits meant to the Ptolemaic model was that two of the epicycles could be combined into one ellipse” (Gerardus Bouw, Geocentricity, 1992, pp. 309-310).

Galileo like Copernicus had no idea of the distances between planets.  The models he developed were therefore completely inaccurate and could be explained by the Tychonic system where the planets revolve around the Sun (as Galileo was proposing) and this constellation rotates around the Earth:

“In fact, they were still compatible with what one might call the ‘essential’ Ptolemaic system….The Ptolemaic theory left six free parameters that had to be fixed by guesswork. No violence was done to the essentials of the Ptolemaic theory by fixing these in such a way that the deferents of Mercury and Venus were taken equal to the earth-sun distance and the deferents of the superior planets to their actual distances from the sun.

This choice has the consequence that the geometrical arrangement of the Copernican system (when treated as here in the zero-eccentricity approximation) is exactly reproduced, the only difference being that in one system the earth is at rest, in the other the sun. This in fact is the system which Tycho Brahe proposed….As far as astronomical observations are concerned, the Tychonic system, which is a special case of the Ptolemaic one, is kinematically identical to Copernicus’s except in its relation to the distant stars.” (Julian B. Barbour, Absolute or Relative Motion, Vol. 1, The Discovery of Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 224-225)

The interpretation of Venus’ phases will be influenced by your philosophical worldview.  It is not proof of anything. 

The Trial

The mythical version of the trial popularised by Atheists, Protestants and those who abuse the Church goes something like this:  Galileo the uber-rational, smartest-man-in-the-room, honest and hard-working scientist, had confirmed that the Earth orbited the Sun and was forced to abandon this correct view, under threat of death, because it conflicted with the established religious dogma of the day.  This incorrect appraisal is simply propaganda used by those whose own religion (atheism, evolution, science etc) demonstrably hates its competitors including the Church. 

Dishonest, revisionist, secular and dogmatic 18th and 19th century historians commonly viewed ‘The Affair’ as a conflict between science and faith.  At the height of ‘The Enlightenment’ which birthed ‘The Science’, we have for example Voltaire who propagated the lie that Galileo ended his life in a prison, subject to torture: "groan[ing] away his days in the dungeons of the Inquisition, because he had demonstrated by irrefragable proofs the motion of the earth" (in fact, the famous scientist was well treated by the authorities) (Numbers, p. 68.)  Voltaire’s appraisal is the standard belief for most people. 

Yet most competent and objective modern historians dismiss the myth.  20th century essayist Arthur Koestler wrote:

“I believe the idea that Galileo’s trial was a kind of Greek tragedy, a showdown between ‘blind faith’ and ‘enlightened reason,’ to be naively erroneous” (Arthur Koestler, p. 432)

Numerous modern historians revisiting the episode have come to similar conclusions.  ‘The Affair’ is mostly propaganda and distorts reality. 

Evidence

(Tychonic model which explains exactly the same observational data as the heliocentric theory)

When you make a claim, you need evidence.

First, it was impossible in the early 17^th century to provide evidence for Galileo’s assertion that the Earth revolved around the Sun, or that the Earth underwent a daily rotation on its axis.  Typical ‘modern’ proofs, which are discussed and criticised in other posts, were not observed until the 19th century, namely the annual stellar parallax, light aberration and the invention of the Foucault pendulum.  None of these prove heliocentricity but could be offered as the basis for discussing the idea as a model.  Today almost 500 years after Copernicus, no mechanical proof exists for either the Earth’s diurnal rotation, or its orbit around the Sun.  Take your time ‘The Science’.  No need to rush. 

Second, during Galileo’s career numerous Jesuit astronomers had found an acceptable alternative interpretation for his observations in Tycho Brahe’s solar model, which allowed for planetary orbits around the Sun (making sense of the phases of Venus) but retaining the Sun and its satellites in a grand orbit around a stationary Earth.  Galileo could maybe call into question the Ptolemaic system, but no more.  As astronomer Owen Gingrich notes, “clearly Galileo had committed an elementary blunder of logic, and even [the mathematician] Kepler criticized him for it” (Gingerich, 111-112).  Without logical proof, the Church’s well-funded, highly competent and advanced astronomical academy and its associated practitioners could not be convinced.

Third, Galileo’s entire supposition was wrong.  He felt that the Copernican model was simpler than the Ptolemaic.  For Galileo, the essential power of the Copernican system lay in its simplicity, not in its provability.  The appeal to simplicity is simply incorrect.  We know that the Copernican system is more complex with 90 epicycles or retrograde motions against 40 for the Ptolemaic.  It also uses circular orbits not the elliptical paths as outlined by Kepler’s complicated Euclidean geometric maths. 

Circular orbits are manifestly wrong, and this is what Galileo supported.  Galileo also never references Kepler nor his maths, which were the main theoretical proof to support Copernicus.  This is entirely in keeping with his egocentric personality.  It is also likely that he did not understand them and could not be bothered to be ‘tutored’ by Kepler on what they meant. 

Fourth, Galileo lacked a replacement for Aristotelian-Ptolemaic physics, which provided a comprehensive system for planetary motion and gravity.  For this reason, writes Catholic historian George Johnson, “Copernicus had delayed the publication of his book for years because he feared, not the censure of the Church, but the mockery of academics.” (Johnson p.1). Copernicanism was saddled with insurmountable questions:

·       If the Earth were spinning so quickly, wouldn’t stones thrown straight up land far away?

·       Why can’t we feel or measure this speed?

·       How could the Earth keep the moon in tow as it moved around the Sun?

Copernicanism was in essence a violation of common sense and therefore would require a new physics, but it was nearly a century after Copernicus that Newton proposed a replacement.  The most compelling evidence lay with the Jesuits not Galileo. 

A corrosive character

A key factor which hindered Galileo was a personality which though innovative, was too often narcissistic, egocentric, stubborn, rough and imprudent.  This was true in his general disregard for others and their opinions throughout his career.  This usually generates more enemies than friends.  For example, in the circumstances leading up to his trial in 1633, he greatly offended the Pope and the advanced scientific-astronomical capabilities and scientists within the Church.  These people were not stupid and often knew far more about the subject matter than Galileo.  Yet he couldn’t contain himself and had to insult ad nauseum without supplying the requested proofs.  Galileo was more Rabelais than Pierre Duhem. 

Galileo also refused to share information with other astronomers and demanded all accolades be given to himself.  How familiar is to those who have studied ‘The Science’?  Such narcissism was most notable in his bitter feuds with Jesuit astronomers (who advised the Holy Office) over priority in major discoveries.  After his 1613 announcement of sunspots, he refused to acknowledge prior discovery by Christopher Scheiner.  In The Assayer (1623), a scornful critique was penned ridiculuing several Jesuit astronomers over the nature of comets, Galileo is said to have written: “You cannot help it, Mr. Sarsi, that it was granted to me alone to discover all the new phenomena in the sky and nothing to anybody else. This is the truth which neither malice nor envy can suppress.”   Galileo was completely wrong about comets, their life cycles and what their import for motion and time.  The point is he was a braggart and often a liar. 

Galileo’s offensive pattern of ridicule became his specific undoing in 1633.  When his long-time supporter and friend, Cardinal Barberini, was elected as Pope Urban VIII in 1623, Galileo went back to Rome.  Over the course of six private interviews, he managed to gain the Pope’s permission to write again about the Copernican theory—a partial lifting of the restrictions imposed by the Inquisition in 1616—but it came with the proviso that the new science be treated in the traditional ‘hypothetical’ fashion.  Galileo finally published his work in 1633, entitled Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems.  Contrary to the Pope’s wishes, its chief characters brilliantly defended the heliocentric worldview, and in an unfortunate caricature, the Pope’s exact argument was presented in the voice of Simplicio, the slow-witted simpleton who defended Aristotelian philosophy and the Ptolemaic worldview.

Considering the importunate tone of his book, his condemnation was nearly certain and had nothing to do with the ‘science’ itself.  In Lindberg’s words, “the trial of 1633 was about disobedience and flagrant insubordination: the issues dealt with in the decree of 1616 were not reexamined; its conclusions [i.e. denial of helio- centrism] were merely reasserted” (Lindberg, p.52).  If Galileo truly had been ‘brilliant’ he would not have been censored and he would have focused more on providing proof than expostulating rhetoric. 

Bottom Line

The Galileo ‘affair’ is a monstrous myth.  We have here a man who while cogent and innovative, was a shady, corrupted character, given to slander and ridicule more than physical proofs and experimentation.  As outlined at the beginning of the post, the long list of discoveries attributed to Galileo is simply wrong and not remotely related to the reality of the man or the era.  Few have loved themselves more than Galileo.

Galileo’s concern with Copernicanism was more philosophical than evidential and had more to do with his ego being feted as a ‘great discoverer’ than with mechanical proofs.  He was after all, mainly a professor - hardly a profession renowned for its prowess in experimental evidence. Academics are justly famous for being egocentric, insecure and antagonistic to rivals.

The phases of Venus do not prove heliocentricity, a fact known to Galileo’s ‘competitors’ for fame and money, namely the Jesuit astronomers of his era.  His inability even to try to understand Kepler’s maths which would have provided some theoretical justification for his views, or his inability to listen to others who may have been more open to his ideas, is all too familiar in the history of ‘The Science’.  A gigantic conceit, needing applause and all to bow before him, ignoring support and benign criticism.  He even turned on his friends and financiers slandering them publicly.  Such an egotist is very hard to admire and like many before and after including Einstein, Galileo was more a showman than a scientist. 

As many historians now recognise, the better evidence in this ‘affair’ lay with the Church and its complex of astronomers, sites, observations, and advanced telescopic instrumentation.  In developing his heliocentric model, “in the opinion of Cardinal Bellarmino and the other Catholic theologians, Galileo's procedures were essentially inductive and therefore potentially fallacious.” (Johnston, 2).  Correctly the Church and its astronomical academy was cautious in replying to Galileo’s ambitious aim to rewrite the rules of science.  They wanted mechanical proofs, and it would take 200 years before incorrectly, the stellar parallax and light aberration provided some support for heliocentricity. 

Galileo and his ‘affair’ are a classic template used by Scientism and the Church of Science.  If any disagree with the saintly demi-gods of ‘The Science’ they are branded as heretics who must be slandered, deposed and buried.  Galileo, like Einstein, Hawking, Darwin, Poincare, and many others are beyond reproach and must be worshipped.  It is all very anti-science. 

NB ==

The letter below is dated the 23^rd of March 1641, and sent to a fellow physicist Francesco Rinuccini.  It was penned by his secretary Vincenzio Vivani, since by this time Galileo was blind.  The contents addressed the discoveries of the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Pieroni concerning the parallax motion of certain stars, some 200 years before Bessel is credited with the same.  

This letter can be found in the Florence National Library archives, rare books department in cabinet 9, folder 5, 33.  It has been investigated and analysed and is unlikely to be a forgery or a fake.

Galileo dictated:

“The falsity of the Copernican system should not in any way be called into question, above all, not by Catholics, since we have the unshakeable authority of the Sacred Scripture, interpreted by the most erudite theologians, whose consensus gives us certainty regarding the stability of the Earth, situated in the center, and the motion of the sun around the Earth. The conjectures employed by Copernicus and his followers in maintaining the contrary thesis are all sufficiently rebutted by that most solid argument deriving from the omnipotence of God. He is able to bring about in different ways, indeed, in an infinite number of ways, things that, according to our opinion and observation, appear to happen in one particular way. We should not seek to shorten the hand of God and boldly insist on something beyond the limits of our competence…. D’Arcetri, March 29, 1641. I am writing the enclosed letter to Rev. Fr. Fulgenzio, from whom I have heard no news lately. I entrust it to Your Excellency to kindly make sure he receives it.”

This recantation is never to be found in any books on the subject, nor in any school system.

Sources

For a rather ridiculous Churchophobic attack on reality and medieval science please read the apocryphal and long-discredited:

White, Andrew Dickson. A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1993 [1896].

Custance, Arthur. Science and Faith. Vol. 8, The Doorway Papers. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

Gingerich, Owen. The Great Copernican Chase. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. “Truth in Science: Proof, Persuasion, and the Galileo Affair.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 55, no. 2 (2003): 80-87.

Hooykaas, R. Religion and the Rise of Modern Science. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2000 [Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973].

Johnston, George Sim. “The Galileo Affair.” Lay Witness (April 1993).

Koestler, Arthur. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. New York: Penguin, 1990.

Kuhn, Thomas The Quest for Physical Theory, 1951

Lindberg, David C. “Galileo, the Church, and the Cosmos.” In When Science and Christianity Meet. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2008.

McMullin, Ernie. “The Galileo Affair.” The Faraday Papers 15 [e-publication]. Available from http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Papers.php. Accessed 05 May 2010.

Numbers, Ronald L. Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Shea, William R. “Galileo and the Church.” In God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science. 1986.