Galileo got off easy.

At some times and in some places, calling the monarch an "idiot" will get you a trip to the executioner.  So, when Galileo referred to his former friend and patron Pope Urban VIII as "Simplicius" - the fool - in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems ofthe World, he was just looking for trouble.

According to Io9, Galileo got into trouble for being a pompous jerk.

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World came out a decade later, and became a huge success in intellectual circles. It was exactly what it was promised to be, a dialog about the two ideas. Then someone noticed something. The advocate for Copernicanism was smart and well-spoken, while the one that espoused the Aristotelian geocentric view of the solar system came off as stupid and pigheaded. Well, authors always find a way to show their intentions, and it might have ended there if people hadn't noticed that the feeble-minded geocentrist used some of the same arguments that the Pope had made during his discussions with Galileo. In some cases, he even used direct quotes of what the Pope had said. And just to underline his authorial intentions, Galileo named the geocentrist 'Simplicio' - the Simpleton.

The friendship that Galileo had enjoyed was broken, with a vengeance. He was hauled into Rome and brought before Inquisition, this time not of his own accord. The private warning, and the official Injunction that had been given to him in 1616, were brought forward, and things were looking bleak. Galileo defended himself with technicalities. Although the Injunction had been issued, it had not been signed or properly processed (even in the 1600s, all court systems had bureaucracy). While it was true, he said, that he did discuss Copernicanism, his book was an examination of both sides and so he was technically not 'arguing in favor of it.' While these arguments were technically true, the Church would have been more inclined to come down in favor of technicalities in the case of someone who had refrained from publicly calling the Pope a dummy.

It was not technicalities that saved Galileo, but whatever powerful friends he had left and his own celebrity status. Galileo clung to technicalities, and insisted that he did not remember the earlier informal warnings not to 'hold or argue' heliocentrism. The counsel before which he appeared debated the possible punishments, before deciding that he should be "condemned to imprisonment at the pleasure of the Holy Congregation." The Pope, still smarting, resisted all efforts to end Galileo's house arrest, even towards the end of the man's life. He also demanded a public renunciation, during which he probably smiled and muttered, "Who's Simplicio now?"

A Teachable Moment - Galileo Division.

Subtitle: There really was a dispute by the scientists at the time over the scientific basis of Galileo's heliocentric theory.

Sarah Posner at RD writes:

In last night's debate, Rick Perry, stumbling over his answer denying the science of climate change, opined, "Galileo got outvoted for a spell." Of course Galileo, considered the father of modern science, wasn't "outvoted" by other scientists, he was subjected to an inquisition by the church for being a heretic.

Ironically, although Posner wants to accuse Perry of being stupid, it is Posner who demonstrates that she has uncritically accepted one of the great urban legends of modernity.

The truth was that the Catholic Church handed the issue of Galileo's claim that the Earth revolved around the Sun to the leading scholars of the day, who, like the pro-AGW scientists today, used their position of power and control over the universities to get a little political pay-back from an upstart they didn't much like. The academic politics of the issue can be seen in a letter from Cardinal Bellarmine which advised that "But to want to affirm that the Sun, in very truth, is at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without traveling from east to west, and that the Earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves very swiftly around the Sun, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our hold faith by contradicting the Scriptures…."

In respsonse to a recent shot by James Fallows at Perry's claim that the acceptance of heliocentrism was retarded by the jealousies of contemporary scientists, Pajama Media recounts:

Fallows further mocks Perry by comparing him to a person who says, “Hey, I’ll mention Galileo! Unfortunately in mentioning him, I’ll show that I don’t know the first thing about that case….” But although Fallows may think that he’s the one who really knows the first thing about Galileo, he may not know the second and the third thing — including what the Church’s main beef with Galileo was, and the position of Galileo’s scientific contemporaries on the subject of heliocentrism. The latter is especially important to Perry’s analogy, since he was talking about disagreements among scientists, both in Galileo’s time and now.

The Church had initially become upset with Galileo for two main reasons, neither of them the conventional “church vs. science” objection of legend. His first offense was committing theological overreach in their eyes when he stated that heliocentrism did not contradict the Bible because scripture should not be interpreted literally. The second was a kind of scientific hubris: Galileo’s assertion that heliocentrism had been proven (incontrovertibly, as it were) rather than being a tentative working theory. In addition, many of Galileo’s fellow scientists, although split on the matter, were more against Galileo than with him, just as Rick Perry said. The reason for their skepticism was not theology, it was that Galileo’s model was inconsistent with the best empirical observations of the time — although of course, in retrospect, his theory turned out to be correct.

The most important problem with Galileo’s heliocentric theory, and one that was widely recognized by his scientific contemporaries, was the lack of “observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun.” It was only much later that instruments were designed that were sensitive enough to detect the shifts. Therefore, Galileo lacked scientific evidence to prove his theory, and many leading astronomers of the day rejected it. The renowned Tycho Brahe was one of them; he had his own competing theory, which was a Geo-Heliocentric hybrid in which the sun revolved around the earth but the other planets revolved around the sun, a system that conformed better than Galileo’s with the lack of observed stellar parallax and which remained in scientific favor for a long time.

I have written that Galileo’s theory turned out to be correct, but that is actually an over-simplication. Galileo was indeed correct in stating that the planets revolve around the sun. But he also believed that the sun is the fixed and unmoving center of the universe, which we now know to be incorrect.

This error does not contradict the fact that Galileo was a scientific giant. But the story is a reminder that even the brilliant make mistakes, and that science does not advance by simple progression from ignorance to perfect knowledge, nor is it proven by consensus. It moves in fits and starts, sometimes with small wavering steps and meanderings, sometimes with great leaps. Sometimes it lingers for a while in blind alleyways. But it is always incomplete, and must continually be tested and questioned.

Water is wet, the sky is blue, Richard Dawkins makes another "silly ass" strawman argument.

Over at Boing-Boing, Dawkins makes an argument about .... based on .....loosely related to ....whatever.....the discrimination practiced by the University of Kentucky in not hiring "alleged Creationist astronomer Martin Gaskell" because he's an "alleged Creationist."  Except that Gaskell is not a Creationist, but he has committed the heresy of expressing sympathy for people who believe that they have to be Creationist because of their view of their religious teachings.

In other words, Gaskell was "vehemently suspected of heresy" and subjected to punitive action by the State.

Uhmmmm....just like Galileo.

Since this isn't 17th Century Rome, Gaskell sued and the University of Kentucky settled out for $125,000.

Boing Boing commenters point out how stupid, arbitrary, fact-free and mean spirited Dawkins' criteria are:

Oh, just come out and say it, you want to discriminate against a certain class of people even though there is no real objective logical reason to do so. You get an ick factor. Which is eminently stupid. Competence is by definition the ability to get the job done in a satisfactory or better than satisfactory manner. If the person is competent, but somehow throws you off personally because of cultural predilections, that's frankly a problem and a weakness of your comfort level. Imagine a world where you could hire and fire based on that. I would certainly like to see what you'd have to say when someone refuses to hire an Atheist, because "it tells you something about him."

Another commenter - with some knowledge about scientific history - points out that under Dawkins criteria Sir Isaac Newton wouldn't have been permitted to teach at the University of Kentucky.

Dawkins backs off by claiming he was never talking about Gaskill; he was talking about a completely different strawman to make his argument easier.

I used the Gaskell case only as a prompt to get into the more general issue. But I very clearly stated that, precisely because Gaskell himself denies being a YEC, I was not going to talk about his case. Nowhere in my article did I say that Gaskell himself should not have got the job.


I deliberately discussed extreme hypothetical cases, because they raise the general issue starkly, in a way that the Gaskell case does not. The Gaskell case is complicated by the fact that he is not a YEC, so it does not bring out the general principle of whether private beliefs should be ignored. Gaskell's private beliefs are not obviously silly, so the issue of principle is not seen in sharp focus.

So, that is why I chose to discuss preposterous examples like the eye doctor who believes in the stork theory, the astronomer who thinks the universe is less than 10,000 years old, and the YEC geologist. The demonstration that it was worthwhile raising these hypothetical extremes is precisely the fact that a substantial number of commenters on Boing Boing have come out and stated that they would STILL hire somebody even if his private beliefs were as ridiculous as these hypothetical cases.

Well, sure, as long as you can control the assumptions of the argument, then you can control the outcome of the argument, i.e., if a tail is a leg, a horse has five legs.
 
But, of course, that is (a) inane and (b) not particularly interesting.  No one was talking about hiring a person who believes that Mars is a purple mongoose.  Dawkins got the traction to make his his apparently banal argument on the currency and notoriety of the Gaskell case, i.e., Dawkins was using the Gaskell case as a springboard for his silly ass ruminations and was implicitly equating the university's decision about Gaskell with a decision not to hire someone who believed that Mars was a purple mongoose.
 
Glenn Reynolds observes:
 

And as far as I can tell, Dawkins is going out of his way to suggest — without quite saying — that a man who writes about the Big Bang as possibly divinely inspired is nonetheless some sort of Young Earth Creationist. But here’s what Gaskell says in the very passage truncated by Dawkins: “I have a lot of respect for people who hold this view because they are strongly committed to the Bible, but I don’t believe it is the interpretation the Bible requires of itself, and it certainly clashes head-on with science.”


Dawkins seems to have completely misrepresented Gaskell to buttress his argument. Really, one would expect better from someone devoted to reason above all.

UPDATE: Down in the comments, where I had missed it before, Dawkins backs off somewhat. Nonetheless, I think his post is quite unfair. Nor is he the first to do this. I think creationism is unscientific — but so, of course, is scoring points by trashing those with whom one disagrees. Sadly, however, it is often effective.

It isn't even the first time that Dawkins has engaged in this kind of ad hominem/poison the well/appeal to the masses/strawman argumentation.  In fact, if you took straw away from Dawkins he wouldn't be able to fashion an argument.

Galileo Myths, continued.

 

In an essay on Justice Richard Posner's academic "sloppiness", Professor Bainbridge writes the following:

 

In his essay Overcoming Posner (94 Mich. L. Rev. 1898), my former colleague Gerard Bradley complained of "Posner's recurring caricaturization of the Catholic Church when he should be engaging in counterarguments." Gerry also notes that "Posner squarely invites the reader to choose between religion ... and reality." Finally, Gerry catches Posner in yet another example of sloppiness with facts. Posner wrote that "Cardinal Bellarmine refused to look through Galileo's telescope at the moons of Jupiter, whose existence seemed to refute the orthodox view that the planets were fixed to the surface of crystalline spheres ...." As Gerry points out, however, "Posner is grotesquely wrong on the facts here. Bellarmine, a leading theologian of the day, was on friendly terms with Galileo. Bellarmine accepted Galileo's invitation to look through the telescope in April of 1611, and thanked Galileo for the opportunity." Yes, Galileo eventually got into trouble with the Church, but here again we see Posner evidencing "only a superficial engagement with the facts."

I'd recently heard something about the refusal to look through the telescope - maybe from Christopher Hitchens - so I posting this for when I need to remind myself about the truth of the claim.

 

Speaking of 10 second pseudo-knowledge soundbites, Hitchens, in his recent debate with William Dembski, claimed that when Father Georges Lemaitre, the Jesuit priest who "discovered" the "Big Bang", described his discovery with some pope, the pope offered to make the "Big Bang" a matter of Catholic doctrine, to which offer Lemaitre demurred.

 

It's amazing the effect a confident British accent has.  The story is obviously unsourced, unmitigated bullshit.  Catholic magisterial authority doesn't work that way, and the idea of making a recent scientific doctrine a matter of Catholic doctrine is sheer nonsense.  But Hitchens said it - without citation - and his herd of lemming-like "independent minded" followers will be quoting it as gospel.  On the other hand, I'm reluctant to call bullshit on it without first finding out what Hitchens is basing this claim on because there is bound to be some tenuous relationhip with reality that Hitchens has uncharitably distorted.  And, so, the Hitchens/Dawkins bullshit machine continues to grind out the pseudo-knowledge.

Update:

This may be the seed from which Hitchens has manufactured his story:

It is tempting to think that Lemaître’s deeply-held religious beliefs might have led him to the notion of a beginning of time. After all, the Judeo-Christian tradition had propagated a similar idea for millennia. Yet Lemaître clearly insisted that there was neither a connection nor a conflict between his religion and his science. Rather he kept them entirely separate, treating them as different, parallel interpretations of the world, both of which he believed with personal conviction. Indeed, when Pope Pius XII referred to the new theory of the origin of the universe as a scientific validation of the Catholic faith, Lemaître was rather alarmed. Delicately, for that was his way, he tried to separate the two:

 

“As far as I can see, such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being… For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God… It is consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in the beginning of the universe.”

Here is an interesting and useful discussion of Lemaitre's approach to faith and science.  A discussion of the interaction between Pius XII and Lemaitre is offered.

During most of Lemaître's tenure in the academy, Pope Pius XII occupied the Chair of Peter. The Pope delivered his famous speech, "Un'Ora," after he analyzed Lemaître's science with the intent of developing a philosophical argument that one could ultimately use to prove the existence of God. This event immediately stimulated theological and scientific debate on the relationship of science and religion. Pius XII had provided two arguments relying on science to confirm philosophical positions that included God. First, he mentioned the instability of the universe. Pius XII thought it was logical that an immutable being had to have created the mutable physical world. Lemaître was not adamantly opposed to this line of reasoning. However, Pius' second idea was not as well received. The Pope said that the apparent organization that characterizes the entire universe was another indication. It appears that Pius XII's underlying assumption was that the supernatural act of divine creation began with the early stages described by the primeval atom hypothesis:
 

. . . contemporary science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux, which along with the matter there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation . . . Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, modern science has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction to the epoch when the world came forth from the hands of the creator.10

Statements such as these contradicted Lemaître's own strict distinction between the tools for investigating matters of science and matters of theology. "He realized quite fully the tentative and hypothetical character of scientific theories and for this reason alone, if for no others, opposed the use of such theories to support philosophical, theological or faith statements."11 As a result, Professor Lemaître wanted his scientific theories to be judged exclusively on their physical merit, keeping metaphysical implications completely separate.
 
Not surprisingly, Lemaître was alarmed when he was informed that the Holy Father would be delivering a speech to the Eighth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Rome. On a trip to South Africa, Father Lemaître stopped at the Vatican to consult with two men, Father O'Connell, a science advisor to Pius XII, as well as the Cardinal Secretary of State. Lemaître's visit had the intended effect. The Pope's speech primarily praised the advances in astrophysics research in the last fifty years, making only a brief statement on the Big Bang, namely that "the human spirit, upon considering the vast paths traveled by galaxies, becomes in some manner a spectator at the cosmic events that occurred on the very morning of creation."12 Pius XII never mentioned the primeval atom hypothesis again.

 The interesting thing about the statement is that it was undoubtedly intended to protect the scientific theory of the "Big Bang" from rejection at the hands of atheists like Hitchens for being too "religious":

 

Despite his unquestionable scientific credibility, Lemaître's priesthood often led skeptics to question his theories, believing the Big Bang was "presented in a spirit of concordism with the religious concept of creation, and even received its inspiration from that religious concept."14 Concordism is the belief that the Bible contains scientific information not known by people at the time of the writing of the sacred texts. Even Professor Einstein confronted Lemaître on this issue. Not surprisingly, Father Lemaître had an excellent response to such critics:

Should a priest reject relativity because it contains no authoritative exposition on the doctrine of the Trinity? Once you realize that the Bible does not purport to be a textbook of science, the old controversy between religion and science vanishes . . . The doctrine of the Trinity is much more abstruse than anything in relativity or quantum mechanics; but, being necessary for salvation, the doctrine is stated in the Bible. If the theory of relativity had also been necessary for salvation, it would have been revealed to Saint Paul or to Moses . . . As a matter of fact neither Saint Paul nor Moses had the slightest idea of relativity.15

Godart and Heller succinctly characterize the relationship of philosophy and science, "There is an intricate feed-back between cosmology and philosophical views. On the one hand, cosmology emerged from philosophical imaginations of the universe as a whole. On the other hand, philosophical speculations often took the inspiration and stimulus from the world-picture presented in the science of a given epoch."16

It is an interesting dynamic.  No one - theologians or scientists - should want a scientific theory to be accepted for non-scientific reasons, i.e., that it fits some ideological agenda.  We've seen the pernicious effect of that dynamic in the "anthropogenic global warming consensus" of recent years.  On the other hand, no one should want a scientific theory to be rejected for ideological reasons either.  Hence, ideally scientific theory  should be judged on scientific grounds, if at all possible, although pace Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"  the ideal may remain only a platonic ideal.
This last bit makes me think that reading Lemaitre may pay some dividends:

Monsignor Lemaître was very successful in achieving the goals of Vatican I and the charter of the Pontifical Academy. His methodological purity allowed him to share scientific discoveries with the Church, protecting her from misinterpreting physical results while at the same time sharing the splendor of her truth with the scientific community in a non-threatening way. Throughout all of this, Lemaître knew that the very nature of his research led man to consider the theological implications.17 Speaking to Catholic scientists, Lemaître said:

The Christian researcher has to master and apply with sagacity the technique appropriate to his problem. His investigative means are the same as those of his non-believer colleague . . . In a sense, the researcher makes an abstraction of his faith in his researches. He does this not because his faith could involve him in difficulties, but because it has directly nothing in common with his scientific activity. After all, a Christian does not act differently from any non-believer as far as walking, or running, or swimming is concerned.18

But Lemaître also felt that Catholic theology guarantees the autonomy of science:

He (the Christian researcher) knows that not one thing in all creation has been done without God, but he knows also that God nowhere takes the place of his creatures. Omnipresent divine activity is everywhere essentially hidden. It never had to be a question of reducing the supreme Being to the rank of a scientific hypothesis.19

Reaching out this time to his fellow churchmen, Lemaître said, "Does the Church need Science? Certainly not. The Cross and the Gospel are enough. However, nothing that is human can be foreign to the Christian. How could the Church not be interested in the most noble of all strictly human occupations, namely the search for truth?"20

Hitchens' 10 second hit and run leaves out all of the wisdom of Lemaitre.  Moreover, Hitchens' inability or reluctance to come to grip with Lemaitre - and his reflex of treating all religion as a caricature to club religion with - leaves him ignorant of the best argument he could make against the Intelligent Design idea championed by William Dembski, namely that God is not a cause in the material universe, rather God is the "cause of causes" and he has granted to created things the "dignity of causation."




 

 

 

 

The Science v. Faith Wars

Vox Day nails the lesson of the Galileo trial as a purported example of religion's intolerance of science:

So Galileo disobeyed and betrayed the Pope, then publicly attacked him and made him look like a fool. The fact that Galileo wasn't simply beheaded on the spot, as would have likely been the case if he had treated any other medieval ruler this way, is testimony to how reasonable the Roman Inquisition was. The most ridiculous thing about the attempt to cite the Galileo incident as proof that the Christianity is anti-science is that geocentrism was a pagan concept while heliocentrism was developed by a Christian canon who took Church orders and may have been a full priest.