It took a while, but the Roman Catholic Church has finally accepted Galileo was right after all. A statue of the 17th century scientist is planned for the Vatican Gardens.
Four centuries ago, Galileo’s image would instead have been on the Vatican’s post office “most wanted, feared armed with pen and dangerous” bulletin board. He stepped on a lot of ecclesiastical toes, including the Pope’s (never a good career move for a Catholic), by stating in print for all to read that the Church was wrong about the Sun orbiting the Earth.
Instead, Galileo, using observational evidence obtained with a telescope of his own design, argued that Polish astronomer and cleric Nicolaus Copernicus was correct. The Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun. Galileo insinuated that the Bible, the Church and Greek philosopher Aristotle were all wrong in teaching the Earth was stationary.
We know now Galileo was correct. In fact, the Vatican might have suspected the same even while arresting and trying Galileo for heresy. After all, Copernicus intended that the Church use his work in developing a new calendar, which it did in 1582. It was Galileo’s attitude that ticked off Church authorities, who were in the midst of dealing with those troublesome Protestants all over Europe.
Under threat of excommunication (or worse), Galileo in 1633 was forced to retract his statements that the Earth was just another planet orbiting the Sun, banned from publishing any further work on the subject and placed under house arrest (in his villa) until he died in 1642. His books (and Copernicus’) were pulled from the shelves of all Catholic libraries and placed on the Vatican’s banned-book list for two centuries.
It was not until 1992 that the Church finally admitted it might have perhaps gone a bit too far in its treatment of Galileo, when Pope John Paul II expressed regret that Galileo had been treated so badly and admitted that, well, yes, the Earth really does orbit the Sun. Our bad.
Now the folks in Rome want to take the apology a step further by erecting a statue of Galileo in the Vatican. From the Catholic News Agency:
Nicola Cabibbo, a nuclear physicist who heads the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, explained the motive for the statue. “The Church wants to close the Galileo affair and reach a definitive understanding not only of his great legacy but also of the relationship between science and faith,” he said.
Professor Cabibbo said that the statue was appropriate because Galileo had been one of the founders of the Lincei Academy, a forerunner of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in 1603.
The statue is part of a long-term celebration of Galileo’s introduction of the telescope (a Dutch invention) to Italy in 1609. According to BBC science historian James Burke, Galileo was strapped for funds at the time. He realized that a telescope would be a great advantage to merchants waiting for their ships to arrive at port. Galileo built a model of a refracting telescope, invited some wealthy businessmen to the top of a tower overlooking the Venetian harbor and showed them how the wonder device would enable them to see their ships hours before anyone else.
They were excited, Burke says, and commissioned Galileo to built several more, giving him a new source of income.
Meanwhile, Galileo aimed one of his telescopes to the skies and made several discoveries that convinced him that Aristotle (and therefore the Church) were wrong about Earth’s position in the heavens. He published his findings in a little book called The Starry Messenger in 1610.
- Jupiter has four moons (eventually named Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto) — Galileo plotted their orbits and calculated their periods; Aristotle had taught everything orbited the Earth.
- Venus has phases like the Moon; highly unlikely if it orbited the Earth as Aristotle taught.
- The Moon has craters and mountains (he measured the height of them!); Aristotle said the celestial bodies were perfectly smooth like marbles.
- The Sun has spots on his surface; it was not perfect as Aristotle had taught.
- The Milky Way was not a cloud, but composed of innumerable individual stars; Aristotle said nothing about this possibility.
Galileo used his observations as evidence against Aristotle’s erroneous astronomy, much as he used his experiments with balls rolling down ramps and falling out of towers to demolish Aristotle’s physics. Trusting his senses, his reason and his equipment, Galileo set the stage for modern science, which depends on physical evidence for its theories and other conclusions.
So, he deserves a statue. It’s just a few years too late.
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