Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
ters. They obediently ruled that “the proposition that the sun is the centre and does not re-
volve about the earth, is foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because expressly
brought before the Inquisition, where Cardinal Bellarmin decried the damage it would do
to Christian faith were the planets found to revolve around the Sun. If Earth was nothing
special, just one of many planets careening through space, how special were its inhabit-
ants? Galileo's telescope not only threatened humanity's favored place in the eyes of God,
it threatened the Bible's promise of salvation.
Galileo found himself in ever more awkward quarters. How could one individual chal-
lenge the most powerful political and cultural force of his day? In his own defense, Galileo
invoked the authority of St. Augustine's ideas, but even that didn't work.
Several weeks later the Inquisition condemned an already dead Copernicus and banned
all writing that affirmed that Earth revolved around the Sun. To teach that our planet moved
through space was dangerous in this world and invited damnation in the next.
After Pope Urban VIII permitted Galileo to write a topic outlining the arguments for and
against the Copernican system, Galileo eventually published his
Dialogue Concerning the
Two Chief World Systems
in 1632. The price of publication was the condition that Galileo
include the pope's views and yet another humiliating preface admitting that Copernicus had
fabricated it all. This time, however, scholars all across the continent laughed at the trans-
parently coerced disclaimer. If Galileo secretly felt redeemed, it did him no good. He didn't
help himself by putting the pope's traditional views in the mouth of a character named Sim-
plicio, which can be interpreted as simpleton. The embarrassed and infuriated Pope ordered
Galileo to his knees in front of a tribunal and forced him to recant his heretical ideas.
Galileo's experience shows how conflict arose when science revealed things that con-
tradicted traditional beliefs. It also raised a still controversial question: How were Christi-
ans supposed to react to the discoveries of natural philosophers? Did empirical observation
trump biblical revelation, or vice versa? That this issue remains unresolved is apparent in
the arguments used in today's ongoing conflict over what to teach in science classrooms.
Although Galileo endured clerical condemnation for arguing that Earth was not the cen-
ter of the universe, the then conventional idea that Earth stood at the center of everything
