Greg+Silva+-+Week+3

Galileo, through the observations he made with his telescope, capable of 20x magnification and the most powerful instrument of its time, uncovered several truths that conflicted with common interpetations of the Bible and previously accepted assumptions about the universe. He discovered that the moon, like the Earth, had geographic features such as mountains, plateaus, and depressions, and could calculate the size of these features. Pointing at the sun, Galileo found blemishes (sunspots) that contradicted the popular Aristotelian notion that the heavenly bodies were made of some fifth element and therefore perfect. Further, Galileo found four objects near Jupiter that could be easily explained using the Copernican system (that they go around Jupiter) than the Aristotelian system, and Galileo observed Venus complete a cycle of phases, which would be geometrically impossible with the Aristotelian system.

When Galileo initially published many of the results of his observations through his telescope in //Siderius Nuncius//, church officials criticized his findings. However, upon presenting his findings to "Father Clavius, author of Gregorian Calendar and undisputed leader of Jesuit astronomy" (Fowler), who "had a hard time believing there were mountains on the moon" (Fowler), Clavius "surrendered with good grace on looking through the telescope" (Fowler). Church leadership, contrary to popular belief fueled by the language in Galileo's indictment at the hands of the Inquisition, accepted Galileo's evidence as true upon observing it themselves.

Bellarmine, writing for the Church's initial skepticism, believed that "if there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary, and say rather that we do not understand them than that what is demonstrated is false" (Fowler). This logic agrees with Galileo's views of how to proceed if theological arguments and observations seem to contradict; that the Bible, while never untrue, "is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare words signify" (Galilei, Modern History Sourcebook). Galileo, like Bellarmine, "[does] not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them" (Galilei) - that observations can't be proven false because of seeming contradictions in the scripture. When these conflicts occur, Galileo and the Church both believe the scripture involved can be interpeted beyond its literal meaning so that both the observation and the scripture remain true.

The Inquisition indicted Galileo and forced him to recant not because he tried to show that the world was heliocentric - that was reasonably believable for anyone who looked through his telescope and made the same observations tha the did - but rather because he violated a previous order stating that he "was neither to hold, defend, nor teach in any manner whatever, either orally or in writing, the said false doctrine" (Galilei) of the Copernican solar system, which, as Copernicus's publisher had noted, was an interesting mathematical model but not necessarily true. Galileo dug himself into a deeper political hole with the church with his publicaiton of //A Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences//, in which Galileo portrayed many views then supported by the Church with the character "Simplico" (a fool).

The tension between Galileo and the Church had not been caused by his observations and hypotheses regarding the nature of the heavens - Galileo had successfully convinced the Church that his ideas were at least plausible and that his observations were true. The tension that resulted in Galileo's house arrest arose when Galileo ignored a direct Church order to not teach the Copernican solar system, magnified by portraying the Church's views on the way the world works as foolish in his //Dialogue//.