In the Seventeenth Century, the Italian scientist and philosopher Galileo Galilei came under fire from the Catholic Church for his views on astronomy. In his treatise, Sidereus Nuncius The Starry Messenger , he wrote about the observations he made regarding moons of Jupiter, sunspots and the phases of Venus.
These findings supported Copernicus's theories and were in direct opposition to the Church's teachings that everything revolved around Earth. Galileo Galilei was a Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century scientist and philosopher whose achievements include the invention of the telescope which he used in observing the Sun, the Moon, and various planets like Jupiter and Venus.
Because of the telescope, Galileo was able to observe sunspots, how the Moon interacted with Earthly tides, and that Earth orbited around the Sun instead of the other way around. Up until then, the Aristotelian view of geocentrism everything revolves around Earth was the model that the Catholic Church used.
Then Galileo showed that Copernicus' model of heliocentrism everything revolves around the Sun was the correct one to use. Geocentrism is the belief that the Earth remains stationary and that all heavenly bodies operate in orbit around it. Opposite to that is heliocentrism which states that the Sun is the center of the universe and acts as an anchor to all that orbit around it.
The problem was that no one at the time understood the subtleties of telescopes. Telescopes focus imperfectly. What should be a point of light in a telescope winds up looking like a fuzzy spot. That spot was what astronomers, including Galileo, were measuring. A full understanding of telescopes and the relative motion of the stars would not be achieved until the 19th century.
Today, it is understood to be a key factor in weather patterns, and it is called the Coriolis effect, after a 19th-century scientist. But this action alone could not explain the Mediterranean tides, which occur twice daily. To this, Galileo argued that the tidal periods in different places were determined by local characteristics that reflected the water surge back and forth within the local basin.
Thus, the twice-daily tides were characteristic of the Mediterranean only. When churchmen or a royal woman argued against Galileo, they were not denying science. They had science on their side. In , however, Galileo was informed by Richard White of England that this claim was in error; tides are twice daily at Lisbon, too. Yet in , Galileo presented it again, with a key change to his argument from He omitted all mention of the Atlantic tides. The science of the day—the observable evidence, the most correct reasoning—was against him and his theory.
And his opponents knew that. Melchoir Inchofer, S. Zaccaria Pasqualigo, also involved in that rejection, noted the issue of tidal periods. Thus when churchmen or a royal woman argued against Galileo, they were not denying science. The Earth may not be the center of the universe, but neither is the sun; it is just one star in a galaxy of stars, which, in turn, is one among a universe of galaxies.
Any Galileo story that ends with a triumphant finality misunderstands the nature of science itself. No one today views the universe as Galileo did. The Earth may not be the center of the universe, but neither is the sun. Furthermore, such a story misses the very things about Galileo that made him great: his wider vision; the artistic talent that allowed him to see and intuit the truth even if incompletely; his mathematical ability to ask the right questions and suggest ways of searching for answers; his genius for communicating his ideas to a broad and influential audience.
But just as we must recognize that science is neither monolithic nor always right, we also should be wary of treating the other side of this equation, the church, as if it, too, were a single entity speaking with a single voice. Historians debate the root of that injustice. Some blame the personalities involved. Others cite the political and economic pressures involving the Holy See and the wealth of the Medici family, represented by Grand Duchess Christina.
All these pressures were real. None justified a heresy trial. To cite but one example: A generation after Galileo, Jesuit priests in Maryland would own slaves. That racism infects society even today. We study what happened in history to imagine a better future. That is the immediate relevance of the Galileo story to us today.
You do not treat Covid as if it were the flu. You do not treat systemic racism as if it were merely an economic issue. You do not treat the mistakes the church made with Galileo by assuming it was due to science-denial in the church. This was the second time that Galileo was in the hot seat for refusing to accept Church orthodoxy that the Earth was the immovable center of the universe: In , he had been forbidden from holding or defending his beliefs.
The Church had decided the idea that the sun moved around the Earth was an absolute fact of scripture that could not be disputed, despite the fact that scientists had known for centuries that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Galileo agreed not to teach the heresy anymore and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It took more than years for the Church to admit that Galileo was right and to clear his name of heresy.
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