Balancing Science and Spirituality
I’m inclined to think that the authority of Holy Scripture is intended to convince men of those truths which are necessary for their salvation, which, being far above man’s understanding, cannot be made credible by any learning, or any other means than revelation by the Holy Spirit.
Galileo Galilei, Letter to Benedetto Castelli
In July of 1971, an interesting experiment was done on the moon by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott. The moon has no atmosphere to provide air resistance to a very light object, so the objects can fall unhindered. To prove the results of an experiment conducted over three hundred years before, Scott dropped a hammer and a falcon feather (the landing module was dubbed Falcon) and both landed on the lunar surface at the same time. Galileo Galilei would have been thrilled.
If everything we read in the media is to be believed, then science and faith are incompatible. A thinking man or woman must choose between intelligence and superstition. There is no doubt that in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries we have seen an increase in this tension. But many of the greatest scientists in history have been devout individuals, including Blaise Pascal, Nicolaus Copernicus, Louis Pasteur, and Gregor Mendel. Perhaps one of the most accomplished men of faith and science is Galileo Galilei, the Italian mathematician, physicist, astronomer, inventor, and accomplished musician.
Born in Pisa, Italy, in 1564 to a musician father—who played the lute—he was the oldest of six children. Only four of his siblings lived through infancy. The family had financial problems that were left to Galileo after his father’s death in 1591, including the need for dowries for his sisters. His brothers-in-law sought legal help to get the money they felt they deserved. Michelangelo, Galileo’s young brother, often needed financial help. It seemed everyone had a hand in Galileo’s pocket.
Galileo’s education began in a monastery near Florence. He then attended the University of Pisa to study medicine. After a number of years of study, the future scientist dropped out of school but continued to study on his own. He supported himself by tutoring. He also applied himself to some challenging mathematical problems, and his skill was noticed and rewarded with a teaching position at Pisa. He chaired the Department of Mathematics.
A Thinking Man Takes on the Thinkers
Galileo argued for an experimental approach to science with results explained with mathematics. This was a new approach.
Scientists speak of the Law of Falling Bodies. Galileo’s contribution to this comes from one of his most famous experiments—an experiment that made enemies. The thinkers of his day followed principles laid down by Aristotle eighteen centuries before. Based on those principles, scientists of the day believed heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones. It was a conclusion reached by Aristotelian logic. But Galileo wasn’t so sure. He experimented with balls of different mass and discovered they fell at the same rate. According to Galileo’s biographer Vincenzo Viviani, the mathematician proved his point by dropping balls of differing weights from the Tower of Pisa. They hit the ground at the same time.
This was more than a simple experiment. It was an attack on the accepted reasoning of the time. It meant Aristotle was wrong, and if the ancient Greek was wrong about that, what other errors might be in his teaching? Those who had been taught the principles of Aristotle all their lives were being shown the error of their thinking, and not many people respond with kindness to such correction. Many of his fellow teachers in Pisa turned against him, forcing Galileo to look elsewhere for work. Thanks to some friends, he found and took a teaching position in Padua, a more intellectually open environment.
Telescoping a Future
While at Padua he heard of the telescope (more of a spyglass) having been invented in the Netherlands. Unable to acquire one, he made his own, grinding the lenses himself. His version was superior to the earlier devices. While the early telescopes could magnify distant objects threefold, Galileo’s scopes had a magnification of up to twenty times. This moved the telescope from novelty to serious scientific instrument.
While best known for the advancement of the telescope and being the first to turn it skyward, Galileo invented other items including the geometric compass, the isochronous pendulum, the pendulum clock, and an early thermometer.
A Thinking Man Takes on an Old Idea
Ptolemy was a Greek astronomer who lived thirteen hundred years before Galileo. He taught that the earth was the center of the solar system, a belief that fit nicely with the Catholic Church. There was a certain logic to it. Appearance is a powerful influence. Situated as we are on this planet, it seems that everything in the heavens rotates around us. Even in the twenty-first century we still speak of “sunrise” and “sunset.” Why? Because that’s what we see. Deeper investigation has proven beyond any doubt that the earth spins on its axis, making it appear that the sun rises and sets. Yet even knowing that doesn’t keep us from using the “language of appearance.” It is easy to understand how Ptolemy and those who followed him could believe in an earth-centric solar system.
Nicolaus Copernicus, who lived a generation before, advocated a heliocentric system—a “sun-centered” system. However, by Galileo’s time, the Ptolemy model had been engraved into the thinking of theologians, many of whom could not see the benefit of knowledge gained by observation and experimentation.
Galileo, who was initially more mathematician than astronomer, had to confront the old ideas. His telescope had shown him that the moon was covered in mountains and craters, that Venus—like the moon—showed phases that meant it orbited the sun, and that moons circled Jupiter.
Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer and contemporary of Galileo, urged the Italian to go public with his findings and his belief in the Copernican structure of the solar system. It meant going against long-held beliefs, but Galileo was accustomed to rocking the scientific boat. He published The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), a pamphlet outlining his discoveries.
Not everyone was impressed.
The Price of Truth
Galileo was accused of heresy, with much of the anger coming not from the church but from his fellow scientists who resented his emphasis on an experimental, mathematical approach to science. At the instigation of Pope Paul V in 1616, an inquisition was formed to investigate charges of heresy. He defended himself and his views—“The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heavens go”1—but the investigators ruled against him. He was forbidden from teaching that the earth orbited the sun.
Then Barberini became Pope Urban VIII. Galileo considered him a friend and approached him about a release from the gag order that had been forced on him. Urban couldn’t see his way clear to do so. It would mean saying the inquisitors and the previous pope had been wrong. He was also under great pressure from court intrigue and infighting. But Galileo didn’t walk away empty-handed. He was allowed to write a book about the matter as long as he presented both theories of the solar system equally and did not push one over the other. Galileo wrote Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems, finishing in 1632. It was translated into Latin shortly thereafter.
Although he had full permission to write the book, he made a miscalculation: he named the character defending the earth-centric position Simplicio (“simpleminded”). Some believe he drew the name from Simplicius of Cilicia, a sixth-century defender of Aristotle, but Pope Urban believed his friend Galileo was characterizing him. Urban saw himself in Simplicio and didn’t like it. Galileo’s critics were certain he was mocking the pope and his followers. Although the book was written with full support of the pope and was a bestseller, it brought nothing but grief for Galileo.
In 1633, Galileo endured another inquisition. Sometimes these investigations into Galileo’s heresy are portrayed as grueling sessions, including torture. While torture did occur in some inquisitions, Galileo was left unharmed—at least physically. They sentenced him to life in prison but lifted the sentence and allowed the scientist to live under house arrest. He was seventy years old. That year, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was added to the Roman Catholic List of Prohibited Books.
A Spiritual Man
It would be understandable if Galileo turned against the church, yet he never did. He was a faithful believer who felt science revealed God’s work. He also believed the Bible was a special revelation giving the reader knowledge he could obtain no other way. “I’m inclined to think that the authority of Holy Scripture is intended to convince men of those truths which are necessary for their salvation, which, being far above man’s understanding, cannot be made credible by any learning, or any other means than revelation by the Holy Spirit.”2
For Galileo, science was one way man learned about God and his design of the universe. “For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature’s actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible.”3
Galileo spent his last days writing his final book: Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences. It was a compendium of his earlier work. Not long after, he lost his sight to glaucoma.
In 1981, the Catholic Church formed a commission to look into Galileo’s trials and the judgments against him. Eleven years later Pope John Paul II said errors had been made in the treatment of the scientist. The church made efforts to unwind the decisions made so many centuries before. As of today, Galileo is respected by the church and the scientific community. He has been praised by the likes of Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.
He shaped the church by showing that science can enrich faith, and that observation and testing can lead to new truth or strengthen well-known truth. His life is a testament that a scientific mind can be a spiritual mind.