Chapter 9

Religion vs. Science?

Conflict and Harmony in the Original Affair

The condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition in 1633 has traditionally been interpreted as epitomizing the conflict between science and religion. This interpretation has been advanced not only by writers such as John Draper and Andrew White, whose theses have recently been widely discredited,¹ but also by such cultural icons as Voltaire, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Karl Popper.²

At the opposite extreme, there is the revisionist thesis that the trial really shows the harmony between science and religion. This revisionist interpretation does not merely deny the traditional thesis, but reverses it. To deny the conflict thesis would mean to assert that Galileo’s trial does not prove or illustrate the incompatibility between science and religion, or that the evidence from that trial cannot be used to justify the conflict; one would thus leave open the question of exactly what that trial indicates about the relationship between science and religion, or indeed whether the best lesson from that episode should be formulated in such terms at all. On the other hand, to reverse the conflict thesis involves retaining the terms of the question, science and religion, and arguing that the evidence from Galileo’s trial, when properly examined and evaluated, supports the opposite of what it is traditionally taken to imply: that it supports the idea that there is a harmonious relationship between science and religion.

The most significant advocate of the harmony thesis is Pope Saint John Paul II. In his 1979 speech at the Einstein centennial, John Paul expressed his regret for Galileo’s suffering “at the hands of men and organisms of the Church,”³ and he quoted the Second Vatican Council’s general condemnation of such interferences with freedom of speech and thought. He went on to give his full support for new and deeper studies of the affair, conducted in a spirit which he described as “loyal recognition of wrongs from whatever side they come.”⁴ Then the pope stressed that Galileo himself believed that religion and science cannot contradict each other; that the reason Galileo gave for this belief was essentially identical to that given by the Second Vatican Council; that he conducted his scientific research in the same spirit of piety and divine worship which the same council recommended as exemplary; and that he formulated important epistemological norms about the relationship between science and the Bible, which the Church later recognized as correct. John Paul summarized: “in this affair the agreements between religion and science are more numerous and above all more important than the incomprehensions which led to the bitter and painful conflict that continued in the course of the following centuries.”⁵

There is no need here to reiterate the controversial, disappointing, and incomplete nature of this rehabilitation. Instead, I now want to stress that John Paul’s rehabilitation of Galileo involved an attempt to elaborate the harmony between science and religion on the basis of Galileo. How successful was this attempt, and how valid is the harmony thesis?

Let’s begin with the fundamental reason why the traditional conflictual view is so widely prevalent. Galileo’s trial is really a series of events that began in 1613 when he wrote a letter to his former student Castelli, refuting the biblical objection to the Earth’s motion—the argument that the Earth must be standing still because it is so stated or implied in many scriptural passages. One such passage is Joshua 10:12–13, where in answer to Joshua’s prayer to prolong daylight during a battle, God does the miracle and stops the Sun. Galileo’s letter led to an investigation by the Inquisition, which had two results in 1616. First, he was admonished to stop defending the truth of the Earth’s motion. Second, the Index issued a decree which declared the Earth’s motion scientifically false and theologically contrary to Scripture; temporarily banned Copernicus’s book on the Earth’s motion; and condemned and permanently banned Foscarini’s book on the compatibility of the Earth’s motion with Scripture. After Galileo was encouraged by the election of Pope Urban VIII to write and publish the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, he was put on trial by the Inquisition and eventually found guilty of a religious crime called “vehement suspicion of heresy.” And the Inquisition’s sentence specified that Galileo’s suspected heresy was two-fold: to hold that the Earth moves, and that it is proper to defend a scientific theory contrary to Scripture.

In light of these events, it is easy to sympathize with the traditional interpretation which summarizes the whole story by saying that here we obviously have a clash between the father of modern science and the Catholic religion. If this is not a conflict, where and when could there be one? How could one say otherwise? In particular, how can Pope John Paul II speak of harmony? I think what the pope had in mind is the following.

The harmony interpretation begins by making a distinction between the Catholic religion as such on the one hand, and men and institutions of the Church on the other. It then goes on to say that the injustices, errors, and abuses were committed by men and institutions for which they and not the Church are responsible, and so the conflict was between a scientist and some churchmen. In regard to the relationship between science and religion, the correct view is the one elaborated by Galileo himself, which the Church later adopted as its own (for example, with Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissimus Deus in 1893).

As we saw, that view says that God revealed himself to humanity in two ways, through His Word and through His Work. His Word, Holy Scripture, aims to give us information which we cannot discover by studying and examining His Work. But to find out what His Work is like, we need to observe it by using those parts of it which are our bodily senses and by reasoning about it with that other aspect of the Divine Work which is our mind. In short, Scripture is only an authority on questions of faith and morals, not on scientific factual questions about physical reality. In Galileo’s trial, a key difficulty was the misunderstanding of these principles by the churchmen in power; once these principles are clarified and understood, as Galileo himself ironically contributed to doing, the conflict between science and religion evaporates and can subsist only in the mind or imagination of people who do not know better.

However, these considerations, although helpful, cannot be the end of the story. The situation is more complicated, and we must delve deeper.

Galileo’s trial involved two main issues: the scientific issue of the location and behavior of the terrestrial globe in physical reality; and the philosophical, methodological, and theological question of the relationship between astronomical science and Scripture. The second issue reflected a disagreement between two points of view. On one side, Church officials held that Scripture is a scientific authority, and since the Copernican theory of the Earth’s motion contradicts many scriptural passages literally interpreted, Copernicanism is contrary to Scripture; indeed, the 1616 Index’s decree explicitly stated such a contrariety, and the 1633 Inquisition’s sentence explicitly blamed Galileo for ignoring it. On the other side, Galileo held that Scripture is not a scientific authority, which implies that scriptural passages contradicting the Earth’s motion should not be interpreted literally, and so Copernicanism is not really contrary to Scripture; indeed, in the letters to Castelli and to Christina, Galileo explicitly argued for such compatibility, and in the Dialogue he implicitly assumed it. Thus, if in this controversy we take Copernicanism to represent science and Scripture to represent religion, then Galileo was the one claiming that there is no real incompatibility between the two, whereas the Church was the one claiming that the apparent conflict between Copernicanism and Scripture is real. It follows that there was an irreducible conflictual element in Galileo’s trial, between those like Galileo who believed that there is no conflict between religion and science, and those like Church officials who believed that there is a conflict. And the irony of the situation is that it was the loser or victim who held the presumably more fundamentally correct view. However, insofar as that non-conflictual view is the more plausible or nearly correct one, then it suggests a minor and residual harmonious element in the trial.

Furthermore, in more general cultural terms, Galileo was not the only one who held that there was no conflict. And many of those who agreed with him on this question of principle were themselves churchmen. For example, as we have seen, the author explicitly condemned in the anti-Copernican decree of the Index in 1616 was Carmelite father Paolo Antonio Foscarini, who had published a book arguing that the Earth’s motion is compatible with Scripture. And the author of the first published defense of Galileo was Dominican friar Tommaso Campanella.

In other words, at the time of Galileo, there was a division within the Catholic Church between those who did and those who did not accept the scientific authority of Scripture. A similar split existed in scientific circles. A further division existed in regard to the other main issue of Galileo’s trial, the scientific proposition of the Earth’s motion. So rather than the clash of ecclesiastic and scientific monoliths,⁶ the real conflict was between two attitudes that crisscrossed both.

What should we call these two sides? How should we conceive of them? I believe the most fruitful way of describing them is to label them conservatives or traditionalists on one side and progressives or innovators on the other. The deep-structural conflict was between these two groups. In this sense, Galileo’s trial illustrates the conflict between conservation and innovation and involves an episode in which the conservatives happened to win one particular battle. This conflict is one that operates across many other domains of human culture, such as politics, art, technology, and the economy. It cannot be eliminated on pain of stopping cultural development; it is a moving force of human history.⁷

However, this is not to say that the outcome is predictable, pre-determined, or inevitable. And detecting the conservative and innovative elements is not trivial. Historical agents don’t come with these labels attached; and even if they did, scholars would need to judge whether such descriptions are accurate. In any case, innovators often defend their novelties by arguing that they are rooted in tradition; Galileo did this in his Letter to Christina, by basing his claims partly on the views of St. Augustine and other Church Fathers. Conversely, conservatives often oppose innovations by arguing that the alleged novelties are really old ideas discarded long ago; this was a common argument of the anti-Copernicans, who claimed that the Earth’s motion was a Pythagorean idea that had been refuted by Aristotle in the fourth century bc and by Ptolemy in the second century ad. Finally, conservation and innovation are relative concepts whose application depends on the selection of a relevant historical period; thus, Galileo’s opponents argued in part that his ideas contradicted the newest Church policies stemming from the Council of Trent (1545–63), and so represented a conservative throwback to medieval traditions.

These problems do not imply that the dialectic between conservation and innovation is a useless idea. Rather, they reinforce the need to study it concretely and contextually, without losing sight of its intended function: to help us explain the facts.

A Theological Defense of Galilean Science

A good example of the dialectic between conservation and innovation is provided by Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639). I have already mentioned him as an ecclesiastic innovator. In fact, he was a Dominican friar who had unorthodox ideas in philosophy, theology, and politics, and authored many books on these subjects. So for most of his life he was in trouble with the Inquisition; indeed, in more trouble than Galileo himself faced.

In the present context, Campanella’s most relevant work is a book entitled A Defense of Galileo.⁸ It was first published in Frankfurt in 1622, but promptly banned by the Index in Rome. Although the preface indicates that it had been written several years earlier, the exact date of composition is not given. Nor have any copies of the original manuscript survived. So specialists are somewhat divided. The account I find most plausible is the following.

Most likely, Campanella wrote his Defense of Galileo just before the anti-Copernican decree of March 5, 1616, and he did so at the request of Cardinal Bonifacio Caetani. Caetani was a moderate who was appointed cardinal in 1606 and member of the Congregation of the Index at the beginning of 1616, attending his first meeting on March 1, 1616. However, Caetani’s request was an unofficial one. He had several Neapolitan connections that probably served as links between him and Campanella, who was in Naples serving time in prison for his unorthodox religious ideas and for his political activities advocating a kind of communist state.

The full title of the book may be translated as follows: A Defense of Galileo, the Mathematician from Florence, where One Discusses whether the Manner of Philosophizing Advocated by Galileo Conforms or Conflicts with Sacred Scripture. The crucial phrase here is “manner of philosophizing.” Campanella is talking about Galileo’s philosophical approach or manner of reasoning.⁹ This contrasts with the usual translations that render the corresponding Latin phrase as philosophical view, philosophical doctrine, scientific theory, or (just) theory.

This point is extremely important because Galileo’s theory, doctrine, or view (whether philosophical or scientific) suggests Copernicanism or the Earth’s motion. This would imply that Campanella was more committed to the Copernican doctrine than he really was. And it would further imply that he was trying to do the same thing Foscarini had done. On the other hand, “manner of philosophizing” suggests some principle of reasoning or procedure, and so Campanella is trying to do something more general or methodological.

Campanella’s broader aim is also evident from other passages and documents. For example, in the Defense, in the course of a main argument, Campanella states his conclusion by saying that “therefore I think that this manner of philosophizing should not be condemned,”¹⁰ using a Latin phrase that leaves no doubt. Moreover, in a letter to Galileo, dated November 3, 1616, Campanella states that he has sent to Rome and to him a manuscript copy of his Defense, which he describes in Italian as “a discussion where it is proved theologically that the manner of philosophizing you use is more in conformity with Divine Scripture than the contrary one is.”¹¹ This letter also gives a clue that Campanella’s own argument is specifically or primarily a theological one.

But what Galilean manner of philosophizing is Campanella referring to? I believe this is an aspect of the manner of reasoning which Galileo uses in his discussions of astronomical topics, such as one finds in The Sidereal Messenger (1610) and the History and Demonstrations Concerning Sunspots (1613), and which he reflects on and tries to justify in his own critique of the scriptural objection, such as we find in the letters to Castelli and to Christina. The most pertinent and general description of this manner of reasoning is to say that he advocates disregarding scriptural assertions in astronomical investigation. Stated as a methodological principle, it is the claim that scriptural statements about the Earth’s rest and Sun’s motion do not entail that the Earth stands still and the Sun moves. In other words, Scripture is not an authority in natural philosophy; it is the principle of limited scriptural authority. Campanella comes close to explicitly giving such a description of the Galilean approach when he says that “Galileo does not treat any of these subjects from a theological point of view, but rather by means of his marvelous instruments he renders previously hidden stars visible.”¹²

In short, Campanella wants to give a scriptural argument that Scripture ought to be disregarded in scientific investigation! And besides basing this conclusion on what Scripture says, he also bases it on general theological considerations, arguing that in astronomy it is quite proper to pay no attention to scriptural assertions. In fact, such an argument constitutes a major line of reasoning in Campanella’s Defense.

In a central part of his book, which he calls “the third assertion of the second hypothesis,” Campanella stresses the fact that “in the Gospel Christ is never found to discuss physics and astronomy but only morality and the promise of eternal life.”¹³ Correspondingly, Campanella emphasizes two crucial scriptural passages:¹⁴ Ecclesiastes 3:11, “God handed the world over to the disputes of men”; and Romans 1:20, “The invisible things of God come to be understood through the things which he has made.” And he elaborates the point with the argument: “For us to be able to do this, he gave us a rational mind, and for avenues of investigation he provided the five senses as windows to the mind … Therefore it would have been superfluous for him, who came to redeem us from sin, to teach us what we are able and obliged to learn on our own.”¹⁵ Here Campanella is giving a justification of the principle of limited scriptural authority as being implicit in Jesus’ example in Scripture, explicit in the assertions of the Old and the New Testaments, and in accordance with plausible theological speculation.

But Campanella goes further. He argues not only that it is proper to learn about the world by using our mind and senses rather than by reading Scripture, but also that it is un-Christian to prevent such learning. In what he calls “the fourth assertion of the second hypothesis,” Campanella holds that “anyone who forbids Christians to study philosophy and the sciences also forbids them to be Christians.”¹⁶ One reason is that “since one truth does not contradict another, as was stated by the Lateran Council under Leo X and elsewhere, and since the book of wisdom by God the creator does not contradict the book of wisdom by God the revealer, anyone who fears contradiction by the facts of nature is full of bad faith.”¹⁷ Another is that

from the beginning the world has been called the “Wisdom of God” (as was revealed to St. Brigid) and a “Book” in which we can read about all things. Hence, in his Sermon 7 on the fast days of the tenth month, St. Leo says, “We understand the meaning of God’s will from these very elements of the world, as from the pages of an open book”.¹⁸

It follows that “therefore wisdom is to be read in the immense book of God, which is the world, and there is always more to be discovered.”¹⁹ Using the metaphor of the book of nature, and the theological claim that this book was authored by God and so is at least as important as the book of Scripture, Campanella is arguing that it is wrong (theologically) to prevent someone from reading the book of nature.

Similarly, in what he calls “the first assertion of the second hypothesis,” Campanella argues that it is not only irrational and harmful but impious “if there is anyone who chooses on his own to prescribe rules and limits for philosophers as though they were decreed in the Scriptures and who teaches that one should not think differently than he does, and who subjects and confines the Scriptures to one unique meaning either of his own or of some other philosopher.”²⁰ This impiety looks curiously like a description of what Galileo’s scriptural critics were doing, and the reason Campanella gives is something which he also finds in both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Campanella’s reason is that such an impious person “exposes the Sacred Scriptures to the mockery of the philosophers and to the ridicule of pagans and heretics and thereby prevents them from listening to the faith.”²¹ And then he gives a long quotation from St. Thomas that includes a quotation from St. Augustine’s On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis. Thus, Campanella is able to claim that “so says St. Thomas in agreement with St. Augustine,”²² and hence to provide formidable theological credentials to his own argument.

When it comes to the Joshua passage, Campanella denies that the miracle “would be nullified if the sun is at rest in the center of the world.”²³ For “the appearances are exactly the same if either the observer or the object seen is moved,”²⁴ and the Copernicans say that the miracle happened by stopping the Earth rather than the Sun; but “whoever says that this happened by arresting the motion of the earth does not deny the miracle but explains it, just as the physicist does not deny that God causes the rainbow but explains how he does it and what natural and reasonable means he uses.”²⁵ Campanella does not seem worried about the nonliteral interpretation that is needed, but about retaining the spiritual message or meaning.

Campanella ends his book with the following profound and prophetic formulation of his conclusion:

In my judgment, in agreement with what St. Thomas and St. Augustine have taught us in our Second Hypothesis, it is not possible to prohibit Galileo’s investigations and to suppress his writings without causing either damaging mockery of the Scriptures, or a strong suspicion that we reject the Scriptures along with heretics, or the impression that we detest great minds … It is also my judgment that such a condemnation would cause our enemies to embrace and honor this view more avidly.²⁶

Compare Campanella’s position with those of Galileo and Foscarini. In his Letter on the Earth’s Motion, Foscarini criticized the scriptural objection by saying that Copernicanism is not contrary to Scripture because, although contrary to its literal meaning, Copernicanism is a thesis about natural phenomena; but Scripture does not aim to make claims about nature; and so scriptural statements about natural phenomena are to be interpreted not literally, but rather in accordance with the principle of accommodation.

In his Letter to Christina, Galileo argued that literal meaning, patristic interpretation, and scriptural authority are all irrelevant for demonstrable questions of natural philosophy, although they are relevant or binding for matters of faith, morals, history, and indemonstrable claims about nature. Such irrelevance follows from the universally accepted principle of the priority of demonstration, which in turn follows from the two-fold aspect of divine revelation and the asymmetries between the Work and the Word of God. Thus, both steps of the scriptural argument are non-sequiturs: the inference that the Earth’s motion is contrary to Scripture because it is contrary to its literal meaning and patristic interpretation; and the inference that because it is contrary to Scripture, therefore it is false.

Moreover, the literal meaning of Joshua really contradicts the Ptolemaic system; whereas Copernicanism (in the modified Galilean version that attributed axial rotation to the Sun) is largely compatible with the literal interpretation of Joshua. So the key premise of the biblical argument is questionable or false.

In his Defense of Galileo, Campanella argued that the assumption that Scripture is a scientific authority is itself contrary to Scripture, as well as deeply un-Christian, and contradictory to the patristic tradition of St. Augustine and St. Thomas.

So, Foscarini advanced a theological criticism of the minor premise of the scriptural objection—that Copernicanism is contrary to Scripture. Campanella put forth a theological criticism of its major premise—that Scripture is a scientific authority. Galileo proposed a methodological criticism of this major premise, and a scientific and textual criticism of the minor premise. Together, Foscarini, Campanella, and Galileo provide us with theological and philosophical arguments justifying the claim that Copernicanism is not contrary to Scripture, and that Scripture is not a scientific authority.

In my judgment, these arguments of Foscarini, Campanella, and Galileo are cogent and essentially valid. They are thus of perennial relevance and have some applicability to subsequent and present-day issues regarding the relationship between science and religion.

Two final remarks. If my judgment is right, then the original Galileo affair is an episode during which a significant development in natural philosophy or science (the Galilean telescopic discoveries and the re-assessment of Copernicanism) produced a significant development in biblical hermeneutics and theology (the discovery of reasons why Scripture is not a scientific authority); or at any rate the beginning of the modern establishment of this approach to Scripture.

Yet despite the cogency of these criticisms and arguments, we know that they failed to convince the officials of Catholic Church. So, secondly, this case represents one of the greatest ironies in the history of the interaction between science and religion. At the intellectual level, we have the invention and discussion of some of the best arguments ever advanced why a particular scientific theory was compatible with Scripture and why in general Scripture is not a scientific authority. But at the institutional level, one of the world’s great religions issued a formal condemnation of a key scientific theory that played a crucial role in the rise of modern science. A high point in the history of thought was accompanied by a low point in the history of action.

Conflict and Myth in the Subsequent Affair

The story still does not end here, not yet. For, in the case of the Galileo Affair, there are complications stemming from what happened subsequently.

Even those who advocate the harmonious account of the original trial do not deny that the key feature of the subsequent Galileo affair has been indeed a conflict between science and religion. In fact, as we saw earlier, Pope Saint John Paul II believed that the lesson from Galileo’s original trial is the harmony between science and religion, and he wanted to stress and elaborate this lesson in order to try to put an end to the subsequent, very real, but presumably unjustified science-versus-religion conflict. The science-versus-religion conflict is indeed an essential feature of the subsequent controversy, even more integral to it than to the original trial. But underneath lies a deeper conflict—that between cultural myths and documented facts. Let me elaborate.

It may be true, as Pope John Paul and many other authors have advocated, that the animosities between science and religion are a thing of the past, and that there is no longer any good reason for them to continue. According to their argument, during the Enlightenment the view was developed that the trial of Galileo embodied the inherent incompatibility between science and religion, and later this view became widely accepted. They also argue that this view was the result of inadequate historical knowledge about the trial and of philosophical and ideological biases. For example, it overlooks the pro- and anti-Galilean split within Catholicism at the time of the original affair, and the crucial fact that despite the opposition Galileo experienced at the practical level, at the reflective level he himself believed in the harmony between science and religion, and (in the letters to Castelli and Christina) gave very good arguments to justify such harmony. And the view also presupposes the Platonist idea that science and religion are eternal unchanging self-subsisting entities which by definition have a certain nature that places them at war with each other, rather than being historical dynamic entities that are sometimes at war and sometimes in harmony.

However, although this pro-harmony argument is important for a full understanding of the original affair, it does not undermine the essential correctness of the subsequent conflict.

Historically speaking, the view of Galileo’s trial as epitomizing the conflict between science and religion was not an Enlightenment invention (let alone the invention of nineteenth-century authors Draper and White), but started to be developed immediately after the 1633 condemnation. This happened when (in 1633–6) an international group of liberal-minded secularists translated into Latin and published in Strasbourg²⁷ Galileo’s banned Dialogue and the incriminating Letter to Christina.

Also, even if the conflictual view of Galileo’s trial were incorrect, and a thing of the past that should now be replaced by the harmony view, it would be naïve and wrong to deny the truth and consequences of the fact that for about four centuries such an incorrect view has been the most popular interpretation of the episode.

In any case, the Platonist, static conception of science and religion may be inadequate, and so perhaps science and religion are not necessarily and always in conflict, and there may be many episodes when they have been in harmony. However, the case of Galileo may have been one where science and religion happened to be in conflict.

In fact, as we saw earlier, Galileo’s trial does exhibit such a conflict if in that context we equate science with Copernicanism and religion with Scripture; for although Galileo himself believed and argued that Copernicanism was compatible with Scripture, his opponents (Bellarmine, Urban, the Index, and the Inquisition) all claimed that Copernicanism was contrary to it. Hence, there is an irreducible historical conflict there.

Next, it is important to stress that the conflict between science and religion is a striking feature of both the original and the subsequent Galileo affair: in the original episode it takes the form of Copernicanism versus Scripture; in the subsequent controversy it appears as the perception that the trial of Galileo epitomizes the conflict between science and religion. The important difference involves the underlying structure. In the original affair, that deep structure is the conflict between conservation and innovation, which generated the split within the Catholic Church (and within Protestantism, within astronomy, and within natural philosophy) about the relationship between Copernican astronomy and scriptural interpretation. In the subsequent controversy, the deep structure lies in the conflict between myths and facts—the rise, evolution, and fall of cultural myths; the trial of Galileo became a great occasion for mythologizing not only on the part of anti-clerical and pro-Galilean elements, but also (somewhat reactively) on the part of pro-clerical and anti-Galilean forces.

In fact, myth-makers on both sides have been busy for four centuries. For example, on the anti-clerical side, in the Areopagitica (1644) John Milton recalled his visit to Tuscany in 1638–9 and his meeting with Galileo, remarking, “there it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.”²⁸ In the Essay on the Customs and Spirit of Nations (1753), Voltaire commented,

In a decree issued in 1616, a congregation of theologians declared Copernicus’s opinion, so well brought to light by the Florentine philosopher, “not only heretical in the faith, but also absurd in philosophy”. This judgment against a truth later proved in so many ways is clear testimony of the force of prejudice. It should teach those who have nothing but power to be silent when philosophy speaks and not to interfere by deciding what is not within their jurisdiction. Then in 1633, Galileo was condemned by the same tribunal to prison and to do penance, and he was obliged to recant on his knees. In truth, his sentence was milder than that of Socrates; but it was no less disgraceful to the reason of the judges of Rome than the condemnation of Socrates was to the enlightenment of the judges of Athens.²⁹

Nearly a century later, in 1841, in a book widely translated and circulated in Italian, French, and German, the Italian polymath Guglielmo Libri (1803–69) concluded his account with these words:

The persecution of Galileo was odious and cruel, more odious and more cruel than if the victim had been made to perish during torture. For … the Inquisition … was not merely after Galileo’s body; they wanted to strike him morally; they forbade him to make discoveries. Enclosed in a circle of iron, blind, and isolated, he was left to be consumed by the anguish of a man who knows his strength but who is prevented from using it. This ill-fated vengeance, which Galileo had to endure for such a long time, had the aim of silencing him; it frightened his successors and retarded the progress of philosophy; it deprived humanity of the new truths which his sublime mind might have discovered. To restrain genius; to frighten thinkers; to hinder the progress of philosophy; that is what Galileo’s persecutors tried to do. It is a stain which they will never wash away.³⁰

And in 1953 Albert Einstein, writing the Foreword to an English translation of the book (Dialogue) which occasioned Galileo’s condemnation, expressed this judgment: “A man is here revealed who possesses the passionate will, the intelligence, and the courage to stand up as the representative of rational thinking against the host of those who, relying on the ignorance of the people and the indolence of teachers in priest’s and scholar’s garb, maintain and defend their position of authority.”³¹

On the anti-Galilean side, for a while after the condemnation, there was an attempt to discredit Galileo’s ideas by taking his abjuration at face value. A good example is provided by a passage in English author Alexander Ross’s The New Planet no Planet (1646). This book was a rebuttal to John Wilkins’s A Discourse concerning a New Planet, Tending to Prove that ‘tis Probable Our Earth Is One of the Planets (1640). Taking issue with Wilkins’s claim that many astronomers followed Copernicus, Ross retorted: “And yet of these five you muster up for your defense, there was one, even the chiefest, and of longest experience, to wit, Galileus, who fell off from you; being both ashamed, and sorry that he had been so long bewitched with so ridiculous an opinion.”³²

In 1784, in France, Jacques Mallet du Pan started a myth already mentioned but worth repeating: “Galileo was persecuted not at all insofar as he was a good astronomer, but insofar as he was a bad theologian.”³³ The bad theology which Mallet misattributed to Galileo was the use of Scripture to prove astronomical propositions—the opposite of what Galileo preached and practiced. Less absurd versions of this myth claim that Galileo was a bad theologian in the sense of being a non-theologian who intruded into hermeneutical controversies.

In The Martyrs of Science, or the Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler (1841), Scottish physicist David Brewster portrayed Galileo as a coward:

In the ignorance and prejudices of the age—in a too literal interpretation of the language of Scripture—in a mistaken respect for the errors that had become venerable from their antiquity—and in the peculiar position which Galileo had taken among the avowed enemies of the church, we may find the elements of an apology, poor though it be, for the conduct of the Inquisition. But what excuses can we devise for the humiliating confession and abjuration of Galileo? … Galileo cowered under the fear of man, and his submission was the salvation of the church. The sword of the Inquisition descended on his prostrate neck; and though its stroke was not physical, yet it fell with a moral influence fatal to the character of its victim, and to the dignity of science.³⁴

And we have already seen that Pierre Duhem, in To Save the Appearances (1908), tried to portray Galileo as a bad logician and epistemologist, while Paul Feyerabend, in Against Method (1988), considered the Church’s indictment of Galileo as rational for the time.³⁵

What I am claiming is that, whereas the dialectic of conservation and innovation forms the deep structure underlying the science–religion conflict of the original affair, the just described two-sided myth-making forms the deep structure underlying the science–religion conflict of the subsequent Galileo affair. Furthermore, although bilateral, it is obvious that such myth-making is not otherwise symmetric: the pro-Galilean and anti-clerical myths tend to be aggressive, while the pro-clerical and anti-Galilean ones tend to be defensive; and this is opposite to the asymmetry in the conflict in the original affair, in which “science” (through Galileo) was the apparent victim, and “religion” (through the Catholic Church) was the apparent aggressor. Finally, besides the important substantive issues raised by the various views of Galileo’s trial, the development of such cultural myths deserves study in its own right. Such a study must be balanced, judicious, bipartisan, and objective with respect to the pro- and anti-clerical and pro- and anti-Galilean dichotomies; this, of course, is easier said than done. Let us illustrate such issues by means of an example.

The Villa Medici Myths

Villa Medici in Rome is one of the most impressive palaces in the city, and for a long time it was the property of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, ruled by the House of Medici (see Figure 20). This palace was not the Tuscan embassy; the residence and office of the Tuscan ambassador to the Holy See was Palazzo Firenze, closer to the center of Rome.³⁶ Rather, Villa Medici was a palace where members of the Medici family and other special guests could reside while visiting Rome; the property had a large adjoining garden, so that such visits would not be too stressful.

Figure 20. Villa Medici, Rome

After 1610, when Galileo had received the title of “Philosopher and Chief Mathematician to the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany,” he often resided at Villa Medici during his visits to Rome. His last stay at the villa was in 1633, after the sentencing at the trial, when he was kept under house arrest there for about a week.

Next to the building, at the edge of the street stands today a commemorative column, erected at the end of the nineteenth century, which reads as follows: “The palace next to this spot, / which belonged formerly to the Medici, / was a prison for Galileo Galilei, / guilty of having seen / the earth turn around the sun / SPQR / MDCCCLXXXVII.”

The origin of this monument goes back to 1872, immediately after the city of Rome ceased to be the capital of the Papal State and became the capital of a united Italy, known as the Kingdom of Italy.³⁷ The municipal government of Rome wanted to affix an inscription on the facade of the palace in memory of Galileo. However, the building then belonged to the French government, which opposed the project, feeling that the monument would offend the pope. Thus, it took another 15 years before the monument came into being, and it had to take the form of a free-standing commemorative column on public property in the adjacent street.

The event was applauded by the anti-clerical press, but it was sharply criticized by the Vatican newspaper, in an unsigned article entitled “Epigraphs and Insults.” It objected that Galileo was not “imprisoned” in Villa Medici; that he was not found guilty of “having seen the earth turn around the sun”; but that his transgression was to have attempted “to change the physical and astronomical question into a theological one.”³⁸

There is clearly a clash here between science and religion, or at least between some people’s perceptions of science and some institutional practices of religion. But the mythological aspect of the episode is even more basic.

To begin with, the Villa Medici column echoes several common myths about the original Galileo affair. One involves the unqualified talk of imprisonment; this is a falsehood if meant literally, and an equivocation if meant figuratively to refer to house arrest. A second pertains to the one-sided focus on the astronomical issue, which disregards the methodological issue of whether Scripture is an astronomical authority. More generally, the inscription suggests the incompatibility between science and religion.

More strikingly, however, the Villa Medici inscription is a good formulation of the empiricist myth, through its talk of Galileo having seen the Earth turn around the Sun. Again, perhaps this is merely an equivocation, trading on the ambiguity between the literal and the figurative meanings of the notion of seeing. But it is more likely that the expression is meant literally, because of the construction of the original Italian sentence, because of how the sentence was interpreted by the Vatican newspaper in its criticism, and because the creators of the inscription probably meant to refer to telescopic observation. Interpreted literally, the statement is erroneous, since it is impossible to observe the Earth’s motion directly, even today, let alone in Galileo’s time.

Such empiricism is a myth in the sense that it reflects the principle that observation is paramount in science. This principle is strictly speaking false, and yet many working scientists pay lip service to it; so believing it seems to perform a good function in science. In saying this, I am borrowing the concept of myth elaborated by professional scholars of mythology:³⁹ they stress that myths are beliefs which are literally not true, but which often contain some partial truths, and which, more importantly, perform valuable and important functions in defining and preserving the cultural cohesiveness of social groups. Of course, the partial truth of the empiricist myth is that the astronomical discoveries which Galileo made by means of telescopic observation were crucial and indispensable for his own re-assessment of the geokinetic theory and consequently for the Copernican Revolution.

On the other hand, in opposing this myth the religious side succumbed to its own anti-Galilean myth-making, one of these being the claim originating with Mallet du Pan that Galileo was condemned not for being a good astronomer, but for being a bad theologian. The inventors and perpetrators of this myth are misled by the fact that on various occasions Galileo engaged in biblical exegesis, arguing that the biblical texts adduced by his critics against the Earth’s motion are more in accordance with the Copernican than the Ptolemaic system. But such Galilean exercises at biblical exegesis are taken out of context. The context of Galileo’s biblical exegesis makes it clear that he is not advocating the principle that it is proper to support scientific claims by means of Scripture. As we have seen, in truth, Galileo held the opposite principle.

However, such a misinterpretation of Galileo’s view may be taken to help many Catholics make sense or justify the Inquisition condemnation, thus enhancing their religiosity and piety. This is precisely the function of cultural myths, at least according to one theory advanced by scholars of mythology.

So far, I have identified the relevant myths in the episode of the Villa Medici monument. Equally important is the examination of the interaction between such myths and facts, namely documented facts, as established by historians and scholars. Thus, I would want to note that the two particular myths in question seem to have been eventually discarded.

Nowadays, no serious spokesman for science would claim that fundamental facts like the Earth’s motion can be observed directly. Einstein and Popper both emphasized the conceptual aspects of the scientific method. Similarly, no churchman would today attribute to Galileo the view that Scripture is a scientific authority. Recall that in the recent Vatican re-examination of the Galileo affair, John Paul II was clear that Galileo not only held the correct principles about the relationship between science and Scripture, but also gave insightful reasons in support of such principles; i.e., that Galileo was a good theologian. And these papal pronouncements only make explicit what was implicit in the encyclical Providentissimus Deus, by Pope Leo XIII in 1893.

On the other hand, with regard to the theory versus observation issue, now the pendulum seems to have swung to the other extreme: a common slogan nowadays is that all observation is theory-laden,⁴⁰ which makes theorizing paramount in scientific research. Partly as a result, a new portrayal of Galileo has been developed, by Feyerabend and others, as someone who not only had no observations to prove his views and refute his opponents, but did not even have good arguments; instead, he was allegedly an epistemological anarchist for whom anything goes, or a sophistical rhetorician who had mastered the art of making the worse argument appear stronger. A new myth about Galileo’s trial has arisen or been revived.

Interestingly, something analogous has happened on the religious side. The pro-Galilean efforts by John Paul have given rise to the widespread belief that the Church has officially rehabilitated him. As we saw earlier, this did not in fact happen. And as some perceptive scholars have written,⁴¹ this belief is really the very latest myth in an ongoing and perhaps unending story. Moreover, in the course of the rehabilitation efforts, Pope John Paul and Cardinal Poupard succumbed to Duhem’s myth that Galileo’s ecclesiastic opponents were better methodologists than he was.

In the subsequent Galileo affair, then, the conflict takes the form of science vs. religion, and is pervasive, overwhelming, and undeniable. Pro-clerical spokesmen (like John Paul II) may bemoan this fact, but do not deny the historical existence and reality of this subsequent conflict. I am not denying it either, but I have tried to explain it on the basis of something I regard more fundamental. Taking both science and religion as important elements of culture, I try to identify the myths that are operative in them; as in other cultural institutions, myths play a significant role.