It appears to be Galileo vs The Church month in my corner of the Internet. It started a couple of weeks back Michael Jones of Inspiring Philosophy drew my attention to the fact that somebody, who calls himself Planet Peterson, had called me an ignoramus on his YouTube channel. He played a clip of me, during an interview with Tim O’Neill from History for Atheists, saying, correctly, that Galileo had no proof that we live in a heliocentric system. He countered claiming, incorrectly, that the phases of Venus were proof of a heliocentric system. The phases of Venus are, of course, only proof that Venus orbits the Sun, an empirical fact that is conform with a heliocentric, a Tychonic, or a Capellan system, with no means of determining which.
After a bit of Internet rumble, the Planet P descended on Twitter to defend his, in his opinion, completely correct statements on Galileo, his telescopic discoveries, and his dispute with the Catholic Church, most of which were in fact false. He debated mightily with myself, Tim O’Neill, and Michal Paszkiewicz, the translator of Riccioli’s Almagestum Novum, amongst others and received a thorough drubbing.
Following this I did an overlong interview with Michael Jones on his YouTube channel explain and clearing up some of the myths surrounding the early astronomical telescopic discoveries, Galileo’s dispute with the Church and the debate on the world systems in the early seventeenth century. Tim O’Neill has now done an interview on Planet Peterson setting the record straight on the so-called Galileo Affair.
Existential Comics has now entered the fray with a comic entitled An Alternative History of the Galileo Affair:
I have cut and paste his accompanying short essay, however, before I analyse it, I want to briefly refresh your memories on the true facts of the story.
In 1616, irritated by Galileo’s Letter to Castelli (1613) and Paolo Antonio Foscarini’s letter to Roberto Bellarmine asking for his opinion on his Letter of opinion over the Pythagorean and Copernican opinion concerning the mobility of the earth and the stability of the sun, both of which called for the Church to reinterpret those passages of the Bible that indicated that the Sun moved and not the Earth in order to make the Bible conform with a heliocentric system, the Inquisition asked a commission of theologians, known as qualifiers, about the propositions of the heliocentric view of the universe.
On February 24 the Qualifiers delivered their unanimous report: the proposition that the Sun is stationary at the centre of the universe is “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture”; the proposition that the Earth moves and is not at the centre of the universe “receives the same judgement in philosophy; and … in regard to theological truth it is at least erroneous in faith.” The original report document was made widely available in 2014 (Wikipedia)
Absurd in philosophy means here that it contradicts the available empirical facts, which at that time it did. It should be noted that despite the opinion of the qualifiers, in opposition to popular opinion on the matter, the heliocentric theory was never formally declared heretical.
At the instigation of the Pope, Galileo was requested to attend an audience with Roberto Bellarmine, where he was informed of the judgement of the qualifiers and was formally instructed not “to hold or to teach the Copernican opinion”. The Copernican opinion being that the heliocentric system was not just a hypothetical model but a description of the real state of the cosmos.
In the 1620’s Galileo was given permission by the then Pope to write a book presenting the Ptolemaic and Copernican models in comparison, treating them equally. This became his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) in1632. This book was in fact a strawman because by 1632, the Ptolemaic model had been refuted by the discovery of the phases of Venus and the Copernican heliocentric system had been superceded by the Keplerian elliptical system, which Galileo simply ignores. In the book Galileo does not treat the two systems, that he presents, equally but instead uses all of his immense polemic talent to convince that readers that the Copernican system is the true model of the cosmos, although he has no empirical proof to back this up.
It was immediately obvious to everybody that with his book Galileo was very much holding and teaching the Copernican opinion. The book was given to three separate adjudicators, who all confirmed that this was the case and Galileo had breached the injunction from 1616. He was summoned to appear before the Inquisition. During his trial Galileo lived in an apartment in the Inquisition’s palace with servants and cooks to care for his every need and was always treated with utmost courtesy. Having initially failed to worm his way out of the situation, he even offered to rewrite the book, he pleaded guilty, was found guilty of vehement suspicion of heresy and sentenced to life imprisonment. Within twenty-four hours the Pope had commuted his sentence to house arrest. The first six months of his house arrest Galileo spent living as an honoured guest in the palace of an arch bishop. The pope pointed out that this was not quite what was intended and Galileo went home to his villa in the Toscana, where he was cared for by his servants and had an amanuensis to assist him with his scientific work. He was allowed to go for walks in the village and to receive guests. That is how he spent to last decade of his life.
Having stated the actual facts of the story, we now turn to Existential Comics:
The “Galileo Affair” was obviously a pretty funny situation in general. The Catholics were losing so much territory in Europe at that time to Protestantism (relax, it is only England) that they were extremely paranoid about even seemingly insignificant “heresies”.
Here he is actually missing the central point. When Galileo and Foscarini wrote their respective letters, it was during the hot phase of the Counter Reformation. The Reformation and the Counter Reformation was about who is entitled to interpret the Bible. The Catholic Church had always insisted that they and they alone had the right to interpret the Bible. Luther and the other Protestants claimed that everybody was free to interpret the Bible. Then along comes Galileo, a mere mathematicus, and is telling the theologians how to interpret the Bible! Also, as already mentioned heliocentricity was never formally declared heretical. In his letter to Foscarini, Bellarmine says both First I say that it seems to me that your Paternity and Mr. Galileo are proceeding prudently by limiting yourselves to speaking suppositionally and not absolutely, as I have always believed that Copernicus spoke, and Third, I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary; and say rather that we do not understand them than that what is demonstrated is false.
Although it is a myth that Galileo was tortured for his views, or even excommunicated, he was condemned and imprisoned for teaching heliocentrism (although it was more like house arrest).
It’s quite unclear why exactly it is heretical, of course, to say that the Earth orbits the Sun. The bible sort of suggests that the Sun goes around the Earth, but it isn’t some kind of central point about the Earth being the center of the universe because God created Man as the center of all things, like some people seem to think. It’s more like, the Bible mentions one time how the Sun stopped in the sky, and that sort of sounds like it means the Sun is moving around the Earth.
It was, of course, not heretical to say the Earth orbits the Sun, as explained above. Actually, there are several passages in the Bible that clearly indicate a geocentric cosmos. Also, the passage that states that the Sun stood still is one of the important instances where God intervenes on behalf of the Israelites his chosen people and not just some sort of passing comment.
Not only that, but the Bible probably only takes that view because the people who translated the Bible had that view from Ptolemy, so it isn’t so much the Bible being overturned, but Ptolemy.
This is the most fucking stupid piece of pseudo biblical exegesis that I have ever come the misfortune to read. The passage about the Sun stopping is Joshua 10:13:
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jash-er? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hasted not to go down the whole day (King James Bible)
The Book of Joshua is the sixth book of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh and the Old Testament, and describes how Joshua took over the leadership of the Exodus out of Egypt, following the death of Moses, and led the children of Israel into the Promised Land. It is a central part of the foundation legend/myth of the State of Israel. The modern expert opinion is that it was composed in the late 7th century BCE, and extensively revised in the 6th century BCE. That is at least seven centuries before Ptolemy was born! Not only was the world system in the Middle East geocentric during this period, but the Earth was also still flat!
When Copernicus himself presented his ideas to the Pope, a hundred or so years earlier, he was awarded with a gift!
Oh dear, oh dear! Copernicus never presented his ideas to the Pope. What we have here is a mangled version of a real occurrence. In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter (1506–1557), a papal secretary, gave a talk on the Copernican system, almost certainly based on the Commentariolus (c. 1510), to Pope Clement VII, for which his was rewarded with the gift of a valuable manuscript.
But like I said, the Church was very insecure at this time, so I guess they couldn’t mess around.
What had changed between 1533 and 1616, when Galileo’s troubles began, was that both he and Foscarini had tried to tell the Church how to interpret the Bible, see above!
This lead to some pretty funny situations, like some Catholic philosophers refusing to even look through Galileo’s telescope, presumably because they were afraid they might themselves get convinced by the evidence, and then be holding heretical opinions. Not much of a philosopher, apparently.
Oh, we are really digging out the myths, aren’t we? The professor of philosophy, and there was only one, was Cesare Cremonini (1550 – 1631), a good friend and drinking buddy of Galileo’s. The refusal was part of the badinage that flew between the two talented Paduan professors. I’ve written a whole blog post on the topic that you can read here.
The Pope had actually given Galileo direct permission to argue for heliocentrism, as long as he didn’t take a position. Galileo, unfortunately, made the argument far too well, and it was obvious that he believed in heliocentrism.
Wow, he actually gets something right!
Like the comic suggests, it seems to me that anyone making this argument must have been convinced by Galileo, and therefore heretical themselves.
No! It was obvious that Galileo believed in the reality of heliocentrism, but his arguments were purely polemical, and he had, and could offer no real proof, so anybody, who was knowledgeable, attentively reading what he had written would not have been convinced by him.
Unfortunately, Galileo didn’t take up this argument, and merely denied taking a side on the debate, and also that it wasn’t heretical because the bible itself doesn’t take sides on physics (two contradicting arguments at once Galileo, not great rhetoric!)
That Galileo, during his interrogation, initially denied having taken sides for heliocentrism is true, and this was an extremely weak argument easily refuted by his book.
However, firstly heliocentrism was never declared heretical and secondly Galileo’s infamous “The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go”, was made in his open letter to the Dowager Grand Duchess, Christina and not during his interrogation. The Letter to Christina was an expanded version of the Letter to Castelli, which got him into trouble with the Inquisition in the first place, written in 1615.
Probably my favorite fact though is that one of his punishments was having to recite seven psalms of penitence once per week, but his daughter Maria Celeste petitioned the Pope to have it count if she did the prayers for him. Presumably this freed up more of his time to…I don’t know, think up more heretical opinions, presumably?
During the years of his house arrest in his villa at Arcetri near Florence, Galileo wrote his Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences) his most important contribution to the history of science, published in 1638.
Existential Comics’ take on the Galileo Affair is truly a heap of bovine manure that stinks to the heavens.