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Msg. 17168 of 54959
(This msg. is a reply to 17167 by Armp) |
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Hi armp, Nice to see you posting here (if you are the same armp as I know from elsewhere which is not altogether obvious - any scepticism would be cured in the numbers 123 appearing on an ihub post of yours). I cannot tell you that I know Galileo's writing as an expert. But I know a little more than merely his name and the assumption that he was on the side of the angels, in a folkloric sort of way. From memory (so please forgive the cobwebs), let me tell you the argument I am referring to about Galileo and the Church. It was the standard historical reading when I read it but it was a few years ago. Scholars (many of whom worked for the church) in the period between the scholastic movement and the early renaissance had readopted the Ptolemaic Greek model of an earth-centric universe. From trade with Islam as it happens. Ptolemy's cosmology involved assumptions about geometrical perfection (circles good, other shapes less good) and a mankind-centric universe which suited portions of the Bible reasonably well. The dogma of the Church asserted that when God miraculously intervened in the sun's orbit "Sun, stand thou still!" this showed that the Sun was in motion relative to earth. Indeed, the Church argued, the entire universe from earth to the canopy of the stars, involved objects rotating around earth. People wondered what the crystalline spheres were made of and what kind of ether infused the celstial realm. But they were categorical that God built earth as the focal point of creation. As God was the builder, inevitably the design had to exhibit all the signs of perfection. Heaven was, I believe, the realm situated beyond the stars and hell was somewhere down below. Light, air and fire above. Earth and water below. Not only perfect but a beautiful analogue of the structure of a good versus evil creation. Light streaming through the windows of a cathedral reminded people of God's message. Cathedrals which stretched upwards towards the heavens. The dead buried beneath the floor. Galileo built a telescope, pointed it at the sky, and pointed out that Jupiter (or was it Saturn) had its own moons and these revolved around that planet. Not only that but that their orbits appeared non-circular (this last point I may have conflated with Kepler - although I know Kepler wrote letters to Galileo on the subject). Galileo's observations and their implications debunked the notion that earth was central. Galileo took his telescope with him to Rome and thought that the evidence of his eyes might persuade the Pope of what he saw. He also devised the philosophy that nature is at least equal with the Bible as a testimony of God's design: his book contrasting the two great systems of thought survives. Nonetheless, the Pope and his advisors required Galileo to conform with the pretense that his model was merely mathematically useful rather than the expression of reality. Galileo refused to adopt this sort of allegorical definition of his observations (or dissembled) and silence was imposed upon him. Perhaps the Pope saw the implications of Galileo's new model of the universe and his philosophy of nature. To preserve his authority and the authority of the Bible, he needed the sun to rotate around the earth and the earth to be fixed in place. And yet it moves. Eppur si muove. As the church later acknowledged. It is the church which has retreated to the allegorical position. Meanwhile, Kepler - in Protestant Germany - was devising elliptical heliocentric orbits for the planets and showing the advantages of Copernicus' theory. Historians of science by no means cringed at this narrative when I studied the history of science. Maybe history has another view at present in contrast with astronomers! What you are describing sounds to me a bit more like the conversation of Copernicus, who indeed did not have the accurate observational data required. When eventually they were recorded by Tycho de Brahe, Kepler stole them to demonstrate his mathematics. Galileo is all about observational science. Not sure where you have the idea that theology is a science. No science rests upon a notion that is intrinsically neither proveable nor disproveable. Theology is a study based upon a tenuous assumption. For those who don't accept the assumption, it is all angels dancing upon the head of a pin. I agree with your paragraph about scientists seeking truths, regardless of inherited wisdom; although I confess that I myself believe in a universe of opposing forces, which means unique truths are doomed to be evasive - we can only approach truth: never reach it. It also implies paradoxes where principles collide. As I understand it, the four major schools of Sunni Islam reject the concept of Ijtehad. In my view, ijtehad provides a pathway which might permit the evolution of Islam, and the ability to change and improve our ideas is the means by which we approach truth. Western cultures fought for and won a separation of church and state which reaches its most recognisable statement in the US Constitution. But you can trace it back to the arguments of church and state in the medieval period - for instance in the investiture controversy and arguments over indulgences and peter's pence (the Papal tax). The need to adopt a system which permits change and that opposes a dogma which disqualifies it does not have the same meaning as your concept of adopting change for the sake of change. Managing change is difficult. Evolution has many dead-ends. But this doesn't mean the status quo ante is sustainable. Darwin teaches that nature is in a constant state of flux. Any society must change to survive even if change is no guarantee of survival. Electing a truth for all time dooms a society, and a religion, and a species, to conflict and in the very long run, its end. “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” - Darwin The same sort of statement might be made for memes as genes. ps the armp i recognise is unlikely to believe the sun rotates around the earth. so my best guess is armp on abob is our usual visitor. |
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