I received the following e-mail and will correct the initial blog entry as soon as I return from Barnesville. Thank you Sister Mary Richard.
Dear Diane,
I just wanted to let you know that Galileo's daughter wouldn't have been a member of the Little Sisters of the Poor. It is the Poor Clares who are the "female branch of the Franciscans."
The Little Sisters of the Poor were founded in 1839 in France to care for the elderly poor. Thank you for correcting that information in your blog.
God bless you.
Sr. Mary Richard, lsp
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Galileo's Daughter, part IV
If Galileo's heresy trial for asserting the earth traveled around the sun can't be structured as a "religion versus science" narrative, what was it?
First, some bare bones background: In reaction to the spread of the Reformation, the Catholic church convened the Council of Trent in the mid 16th-century. This highly politicized gathering drew a line in a sand between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The Council reaffirmed and strengthened the concept that the Church hierarchy, not individual conscience, would determine Catholic doctrine. While the council avoided confronting church corruption, it did try to correct some ills, for example, affirming that people who were not called by God to Holy orders should not be forced into convents or monasteries.
By 1616, a growing number of telescope-wielding scientists (some of them Catholic clergy or devout Catholic laymen like Galileo and Descartes) believed that Copernicus had the right model of the cosmos. To decide Catholic policy on the matter, the Catholic Church convened a panel of 11 high-ranking clergymen to determine if 1.The earth revolves around the sun or 2. the sun revolves around the earth. The panel decided that the sun revolves around the earth and censored several treatises that argued too strongly in the opposite direction. However, what the panel didn't do was significant: it didn't ban works that argued in favor of a sun-centered solar system, not even the works of Copernicus. Instead, it fuzzed the issue by requiring that such works present themselves as hypothetical. To state as fact that the earth revolved around the sun was heretical; to discuss or entertain the subject was not. Copernicus's work was revised to appear more hypothetical but not suppressed.
Before we are too quick to condemn the council for its decision, we have to remember that, at this time, there was no solid empirical proof for the revolving earth theory. Against scientists' "thought experiments," the movements of the planets and the sunspots stood the weight of Aristotelean tradition (1,000 years old), Scripture and the evidence of the senses. A similar contemporary case to Galileo might be that of Dr. John Lee. He insisted for years that the estrogen in hormone replacement therapy given to menopausal women was causing cancer, but could never prove it. It wasn't until double-blind studies were done by people with funding and the proper status in the scientific community that his theory was widely accepted as true.
Galileo, who was not targeted by the 1616 council despite his known advocacy of Copernicus, decided it would be prudent to lay low. But by 1628, as he was entering his late 60s, fearing his life was nearing its end and angered by Jesuits ridiculing his theory, he revisited the idea of a sun-centered solar system in a book called "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems."
Galileo submitted the book to the church's censors in Rome, who approved it for publication. He hoped to have it printed in Rome, but an outbreak of the bubonic plague made traveling difficult. Therefore, Galileo decided to have the Dialogue printed in Florence, where he lived. This time he submitted the book to the Tuscan censors, who also gave it their official approval. High-ranking clergy, such as the archbishop of Sienna, also supported publication.
But when the printed book reentered Rome, enemies of Galileo attacked it as heretical. Suddenly, the conjecture that the earth might rotate about the sun, though implicitly allowed by the 1616 ruling and accepted in the Dialogue as non-heretical by two sets of censors, was declared by a tribunal of cardinals to be heretical. Galileo was condemned as "vehemently suspected of heresy." His Dialogue was banned (which fanned the popularity of the book) and he was placed under house arrest.
Why the switch? Did the pope and his cardinals suddenly "find God" in a deeper way?
Not at all. Our "religion versus science" story turns out to have been all about politics.
By 1630, the year the Dialogue was finally printed, Pope Urban VIII was in serious political trouble. The Thirty Years' War, which was supposed to defeat the Germans and show that God was on the side of Roman Catholicism, was going badly for Urban and his allies. Urban had been publicly accused by one of the Borgias of not doing his part for the war effort. He couldn't, as Sobel states on page 225, let another affront to Church go unanswered. Further, he was faced with an outbreak of the plague, another potential sign that he'd mismanaged his role as mediator between Catholics and God.
Galileo, an international superstar, provided just the high-profile scapecoat Urban needed to deflect attention from his failings and prove his zeal. Galileo took the fall and was humiliated through a forced public recanting of his views.
******
If the true reason Galileo was tried as a heretic was Pope Urban's political troubles rather than a religion's desire to suppress reason, why are we taught a different story?
One reason could be that although distorted, "religion versus science" is a simple story for children to grasp. Another might be modernism's tendency to "universalize" religion. A standard textbook of the mid-twentieth century might contain essays describing the "major religions of the world." These religions would be boiled down to whatever points scholars (primarily U.S and England-trained white Protestant men) decided were normative for that faith. The idea that all religions are internally pluralistic, with many contradictory strands and strains, wasn't emphasized. With this mindset, it would be easy to depict Roman Catholicism as a monolith in which everyone, in lockstep, favored "authority" over "reason." Galileo's Daughter, however, shows us that in this famous case politics and not religion suppressed free inquiry.
Why do you think this story was distorted? What are the implications?
And ...Sobel's book implies, the real issues within the Catholic church didn't lie in how it treated an intellectual debate about what bodies revolved around what. Where did the true problem exist?
First, some bare bones background: In reaction to the spread of the Reformation, the Catholic church convened the Council of Trent in the mid 16th-century. This highly politicized gathering drew a line in a sand between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The Council reaffirmed and strengthened the concept that the Church hierarchy, not individual conscience, would determine Catholic doctrine. While the council avoided confronting church corruption, it did try to correct some ills, for example, affirming that people who were not called by God to Holy orders should not be forced into convents or monasteries.
By 1616, a growing number of telescope-wielding scientists (some of them Catholic clergy or devout Catholic laymen like Galileo and Descartes) believed that Copernicus had the right model of the cosmos. To decide Catholic policy on the matter, the Catholic Church convened a panel of 11 high-ranking clergymen to determine if 1.The earth revolves around the sun or 2. the sun revolves around the earth. The panel decided that the sun revolves around the earth and censored several treatises that argued too strongly in the opposite direction. However, what the panel didn't do was significant: it didn't ban works that argued in favor of a sun-centered solar system, not even the works of Copernicus. Instead, it fuzzed the issue by requiring that such works present themselves as hypothetical. To state as fact that the earth revolved around the sun was heretical; to discuss or entertain the subject was not. Copernicus's work was revised to appear more hypothetical but not suppressed.
Before we are too quick to condemn the council for its decision, we have to remember that, at this time, there was no solid empirical proof for the revolving earth theory. Against scientists' "thought experiments," the movements of the planets and the sunspots stood the weight of Aristotelean tradition (1,000 years old), Scripture and the evidence of the senses. A similar contemporary case to Galileo might be that of Dr. John Lee. He insisted for years that the estrogen in hormone replacement therapy given to menopausal women was causing cancer, but could never prove it. It wasn't until double-blind studies were done by people with funding and the proper status in the scientific community that his theory was widely accepted as true.
Galileo, who was not targeted by the 1616 council despite his known advocacy of Copernicus, decided it would be prudent to lay low. But by 1628, as he was entering his late 60s, fearing his life was nearing its end and angered by Jesuits ridiculing his theory, he revisited the idea of a sun-centered solar system in a book called "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems."
Galileo submitted the book to the church's censors in Rome, who approved it for publication. He hoped to have it printed in Rome, but an outbreak of the bubonic plague made traveling difficult. Therefore, Galileo decided to have the Dialogue printed in Florence, where he lived. This time he submitted the book to the Tuscan censors, who also gave it their official approval. High-ranking clergy, such as the archbishop of Sienna, also supported publication.
But when the printed book reentered Rome, enemies of Galileo attacked it as heretical. Suddenly, the conjecture that the earth might rotate about the sun, though implicitly allowed by the 1616 ruling and accepted in the Dialogue as non-heretical by two sets of censors, was declared by a tribunal of cardinals to be heretical. Galileo was condemned as "vehemently suspected of heresy." His Dialogue was banned (which fanned the popularity of the book) and he was placed under house arrest.
Why the switch? Did the pope and his cardinals suddenly "find God" in a deeper way?
Not at all. Our "religion versus science" story turns out to have been all about politics.
By 1630, the year the Dialogue was finally printed, Pope Urban VIII was in serious political trouble. The Thirty Years' War, which was supposed to defeat the Germans and show that God was on the side of Roman Catholicism, was going badly for Urban and his allies. Urban had been publicly accused by one of the Borgias of not doing his part for the war effort. He couldn't, as Sobel states on page 225, let another affront to Church go unanswered. Further, he was faced with an outbreak of the plague, another potential sign that he'd mismanaged his role as mediator between Catholics and God.
Galileo, an international superstar, provided just the high-profile scapecoat Urban needed to deflect attention from his failings and prove his zeal. Galileo took the fall and was humiliated through a forced public recanting of his views.
******
If the true reason Galileo was tried as a heretic was Pope Urban's political troubles rather than a religion's desire to suppress reason, why are we taught a different story?
One reason could be that although distorted, "religion versus science" is a simple story for children to grasp. Another might be modernism's tendency to "universalize" religion. A standard textbook of the mid-twentieth century might contain essays describing the "major religions of the world." These religions would be boiled down to whatever points scholars (primarily U.S and England-trained white Protestant men) decided were normative for that faith. The idea that all religions are internally pluralistic, with many contradictory strands and strains, wasn't emphasized. With this mindset, it would be easy to depict Roman Catholicism as a monolith in which everyone, in lockstep, favored "authority" over "reason." Galileo's Daughter, however, shows us that in this famous case politics and not religion suppressed free inquiry.
Why do you think this story was distorted? What are the implications?
And ...Sobel's book implies, the real issues within the Catholic church didn't lie in how it treated an intellectual debate about what bodies revolved around what. Where did the true problem exist?
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Galileo's Daughter, part III
Part III on Dava Sobel's "Galileo's Daughter:"
Galileo’s contention that the earth revolved around the sun was controversial for several reasons:
1. It struck at the core of Aristotelean astronomy. It was not an edge modification to his theory: it demolished it. Aristotelean astronomy was built on an immovable earth at the center of the cosmos. A parallel today would be the firestorm that might erupt if an eminent scientist proposed a theory that destroyed the theory of evolution.
2. A moving earth appeared to challenge Scriptural truth, such as Psalm 103’s “O Lord my God ... thou fixed the earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever.”
3. It challenged commonsense. Sobel points out that is was clear to people as they looked at the sky that the sun traveled across it, rising in the east and setting in the west. People also questioned why they didn’t get dizzy or why birds didn’t lose their way if the earth was moving around space at a high speed.
On the surface, reconciling the Bible to science was a fairly easy task. Contrary to what I was taught in school about Bible literalism in premodern times, people of the 15th and 16th centuries, even clerics, had a sophisticated understanding of metaphor. Remember, this was the period of Shakespeare and Donne, masters of metaphoric language. (Also remember that Donne was an Anglican priest.) While Europeans of this era took the Bible seriously, they understood that many passages in the scriptures were poetic or symbolic. One of their puzzles, as today, was determining which passages to take literally.
Helping Galileo was the fact that, contrary to what I learned in school, science and religion were not in an adversarial relationship during this period. There was not an overarching construct of “faith versus reason” or “science versus Christianity.” Instead, 17th century thinkers saw nature and scripture as the two main ways God revealed himself in the world. Nature and scripture were the two prongs (or manifestations) of a God-centered universe. People studied both nature and scripture for the same purpose: to get a better grasp of God’s attributes and his plan for the world. They looked to science--how God revealed himself in nature--to help them interpret the Bible, and they looked at scripture to help understand how God worked in nature. In fact, many scientists were also clergymen, including Copernicus.
Knowing people were going to challenge him on the basis of Scripture, Galileo prepared arguments to show that the Biblical passages that opposed a sun-centered solar system were metaphoric, and he marshalled other Bible verses that were clearly accepted as metaphor to bolster his claim. He asserted that the Bible used metaphor to help people grasp difficult truths and quoted Augustine that hypotheses not be condemned hastily, lest “that truth hereafter may reveal to be not contrary in any way to the sacred books of either the old or the new testaments.”
As with Copernicus, the biggest problem facing Galileo was not religion, but science. Neither man could offer any proof for the assertion that the earth moved around the sun. Copernicus used math and reason to support his theory: A sun-centered solar system was an elegant way to solve difficulties in what he observed about the movement of planets. Galileo, too, intuited from the movement of the planets and other celestial bodies that we live in a sun-centered solar system.
Galileo realized that what he “knew” to be true couldn’t be backed up scientifically. However, he needed empirical evidence to verify his claims. What he came up with were the tides. He attributed the tides’ movement to the earth revolving around the sun, sloshing the ocean’s water all around. He wrote a treatise on the subject, called “Treatise on the Tides.”
Of course, as we know now, Galileo was wrong about the tides, which are caused primarily by the moon’s gravitational pull. Galileo couldn’t know this because he lived in a gravity-free universe. Sir Isaac Newton, the discover of gravity, wasn't born until the year Galileo died. It’s stunning to think that the man who became famous from dropping objects from a tower and measuring how fast they fell never questioned why they fell.
Galileo might not have had proof for his theory, but he did have high-placed friends and admirers, including Cardinal Barberini, a fellow Tuscan who later became Pope Urban VIII.
If Galileo occupied a world in which the church was not wedded to Biblical literalism and which understood science as the revelation of God’s handiwork, and if high-ranking people in the church hierarchy were at least open to hypotheses about a sun-centered solar system, how did Galileo end up hauled in front of the Inquisition and forced to repudiate his claims?
Galileo’s contention that the earth revolved around the sun was controversial for several reasons:
1. It struck at the core of Aristotelean astronomy. It was not an edge modification to his theory: it demolished it. Aristotelean astronomy was built on an immovable earth at the center of the cosmos. A parallel today would be the firestorm that might erupt if an eminent scientist proposed a theory that destroyed the theory of evolution.
2. A moving earth appeared to challenge Scriptural truth, such as Psalm 103’s “O Lord my God ... thou fixed the earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever.”
3. It challenged commonsense. Sobel points out that is was clear to people as they looked at the sky that the sun traveled across it, rising in the east and setting in the west. People also questioned why they didn’t get dizzy or why birds didn’t lose their way if the earth was moving around space at a high speed.
On the surface, reconciling the Bible to science was a fairly easy task. Contrary to what I was taught in school about Bible literalism in premodern times, people of the 15th and 16th centuries, even clerics, had a sophisticated understanding of metaphor. Remember, this was the period of Shakespeare and Donne, masters of metaphoric language. (Also remember that Donne was an Anglican priest.) While Europeans of this era took the Bible seriously, they understood that many passages in the scriptures were poetic or symbolic. One of their puzzles, as today, was determining which passages to take literally.
Helping Galileo was the fact that, contrary to what I learned in school, science and religion were not in an adversarial relationship during this period. There was not an overarching construct of “faith versus reason” or “science versus Christianity.” Instead, 17th century thinkers saw nature and scripture as the two main ways God revealed himself in the world. Nature and scripture were the two prongs (or manifestations) of a God-centered universe. People studied both nature and scripture for the same purpose: to get a better grasp of God’s attributes and his plan for the world. They looked to science--how God revealed himself in nature--to help them interpret the Bible, and they looked at scripture to help understand how God worked in nature. In fact, many scientists were also clergymen, including Copernicus.
Knowing people were going to challenge him on the basis of Scripture, Galileo prepared arguments to show that the Biblical passages that opposed a sun-centered solar system were metaphoric, and he marshalled other Bible verses that were clearly accepted as metaphor to bolster his claim. He asserted that the Bible used metaphor to help people grasp difficult truths and quoted Augustine that hypotheses not be condemned hastily, lest “that truth hereafter may reveal to be not contrary in any way to the sacred books of either the old or the new testaments.”
As with Copernicus, the biggest problem facing Galileo was not religion, but science. Neither man could offer any proof for the assertion that the earth moved around the sun. Copernicus used math and reason to support his theory: A sun-centered solar system was an elegant way to solve difficulties in what he observed about the movement of planets. Galileo, too, intuited from the movement of the planets and other celestial bodies that we live in a sun-centered solar system.
Galileo realized that what he “knew” to be true couldn’t be backed up scientifically. However, he needed empirical evidence to verify his claims. What he came up with were the tides. He attributed the tides’ movement to the earth revolving around the sun, sloshing the ocean’s water all around. He wrote a treatise on the subject, called “Treatise on the Tides.”
Of course, as we know now, Galileo was wrong about the tides, which are caused primarily by the moon’s gravitational pull. Galileo couldn’t know this because he lived in a gravity-free universe. Sir Isaac Newton, the discover of gravity, wasn't born until the year Galileo died. It’s stunning to think that the man who became famous from dropping objects from a tower and measuring how fast they fell never questioned why they fell.
Galileo might not have had proof for his theory, but he did have high-placed friends and admirers, including Cardinal Barberini, a fellow Tuscan who later became Pope Urban VIII.
If Galileo occupied a world in which the church was not wedded to Biblical literalism and which understood science as the revelation of God’s handiwork, and if high-ranking people in the church hierarchy were at least open to hypotheses about a sun-centered solar system, how did Galileo end up hauled in front of the Inquisition and forced to repudiate his claims?
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Galileo's daughter II
Galileo was the scientist superstar of his era (born 1564, launched scientific career circa 1589, died Jan. 8, 1642).
Perhaps because of his dedication to science, Galileo never married. He had a mistress who bore him two daughters and a son. He had his son legitimized but not his daughters.
Until their early teens, the daughters lived with Galileo’s sister. Then Galileo followed the common path of sending the girls to a convent.
His science
At a party, Galileo, already a well-known scientist, saw a new invention, a spyglass that provided crude magnification. It was basically a toy. Upperclass partygoers were thrilled at being able to discern objects too far away to see with the naked eye
Galileo saw the potential in the spyglass. He repeatedly ground more and more powerful lenses, until he had invented the telescope. When he pointed it at the sky, his discoveries upended the Aristotelean universe, which was the foundation of science at that time.
For example, Aristotle said all celestial bodies were perfectly smooth, yet through the telescope Galileo saw that the moon was pock marked and the sun showed spots. Also, Aristotle taught that the earth was fixed and immovable and all the other celestial bodies rotated around it. However, the telescope revealed that at least four bodies (Jupitier’s moons) rotated around a planet other than the earth. Further, the telescope proved that a 1604 supernova took place out in space beyond the moon, in the celestial sphere Aristotle had deemed immutable.
Knowing how radically his observations challenged accepted science, Galileo put as many telescopes as possible into the hands of fellow scientists around Europe. They corroborated his findings.
Most radically, Galileo came to believe that the earth revolved around the sun. And this is where trouble bubbled up ...
Why do you think this assertion was so troubling?
Perhaps because of his dedication to science, Galileo never married. He had a mistress who bore him two daughters and a son. He had his son legitimized but not his daughters.
Until their early teens, the daughters lived with Galileo’s sister. Then Galileo followed the common path of sending the girls to a convent.
His science
At a party, Galileo, already a well-known scientist, saw a new invention, a spyglass that provided crude magnification. It was basically a toy. Upperclass partygoers were thrilled at being able to discern objects too far away to see with the naked eye
Galileo saw the potential in the spyglass. He repeatedly ground more and more powerful lenses, until he had invented the telescope. When he pointed it at the sky, his discoveries upended the Aristotelean universe, which was the foundation of science at that time.
For example, Aristotle said all celestial bodies were perfectly smooth, yet through the telescope Galileo saw that the moon was pock marked and the sun showed spots. Also, Aristotle taught that the earth was fixed and immovable and all the other celestial bodies rotated around it. However, the telescope revealed that at least four bodies (Jupitier’s moons) rotated around a planet other than the earth. Further, the telescope proved that a 1604 supernova took place out in space beyond the moon, in the celestial sphere Aristotle had deemed immutable.
Knowing how radically his observations challenged accepted science, Galileo put as many telescopes as possible into the hands of fellow scientists around Europe. They corroborated his findings.
Most radically, Galileo came to believe that the earth revolved around the sun. And this is where trouble bubbled up ...
Why do you think this assertion was so troubling?
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