Tonight and tomorrow, I will be at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute attending this event: “The Legacy of Galileo,” which kicks off with the following panel discussion:
What Would Galileo Think?
7:30PM
Franklin TheaterHear four distinguished scholars talk about Galileo’s struggle to reconcile science and religion during the Renaissance. Today our modern context of science and religion affect thinking about topics such as stem cell research, evolution and climate change. How might the controversies of Galileo’s time be relevant to today’s conflicts between science and cultural institutions?
Panelists: Mario Biagioli, Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University; Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Janice and Julian Bers Professor of the History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania; Maurice Finocchiaro, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Joel Primack, Professor of Physics, University of California Santa Cruz
I’m looking forward to the panel and hope to report back as much as possible. There is plenty more science/religion blogging to do, and with the Galileo theme, perhaps I can bring in a historical perspective (so often woefully lacking in these discussions).
To that end, let’s start with a fun, if unanswerable, question: If Galileo were with us today and consumed with the science-religion question, would he argue like Jerry Coyne, or like Kenneth Miller?
June 18th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
If Galileo were with us today and consumed with the science-religion question, would he argue like Jerry Coyne, or like Kenneth Miller?
I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense?experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God’s commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense?experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature’s actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible….
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/galileo.html
Since the real beginning of the current alleged war between science and religion is founded in the struggle over evolution in the public schools, Nicholas Steno, whose work is more directly relevant would be a lot better example and a more clear cut one, considering he became a Bishop who has been, I think beatified.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Certainty may not be anything we can establish, on this and other matters, but I think it’s quite clear that Galileo was a theist who did argue much like Kenneth Miller. I don’t know if Galileo really said that the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go, but that remark seems to capture his stance adequately, regardless.
Is the question relevant to, say, Coyne and Myers, and the current situation? Or is the fact that Darwin and many other proponents of evolution in the 19th century were willing to give “accommodationists” a pass in their time more relevant? Should they have soft-peddled evolution’s impact on religion? I think they had to, but others may think not.
And why does “accommodation” with evolution call down opposition, when accommodation with cosmology’s stark realities, and with (or actually, more against) neuroscience’s virtual expulsion of the soul from humanity, get by with little problem? Why must the already problematic issue of teaching evolution have to bear the brunt of any real and/or apparent conflicts between science and religion?
The “problem” of mind merely being the result of brain events sometimes appears to be the real driver behind ID attacks upon evolution. Which is bizarre, considering what a “materialistic,” essentially Frankensteinian, view of humanity that ID presents in its attempts to be scientific (it also shows how unserious they are about non-god “designers”). Yet the direct evidence against a magical mind comes out of neuroscience, with evolution simply suggesting that magical processes are not involved. The ID plan, though, is to prevent “materialistic” causes from being behind even “material” effects on the body, and thus supposedly cutting off “mind” from a “material” origination.
Yet there is no hue and cry about the accommodations of religious sentiment in the realm of neuroscience, and these sometimes go far beyond anything Miller has ever said or done about god and evolution. Evolution is both proxy and patsy in the fights between science and religion, and it makes no sense to bother evolution–which is largely incidental to the big concerns of religion (like original creation, and the existence of the soul)–for the loss of the “magical mind.” Neuroscientific evidence does that with or without evolution.
Evolution is the wedge issue, and the “anti-accommodationists” are letting the IDists define it as the wedge issue. But if we were to lose on evolution, and thus lose the respect for science and its methods among the public, the “anti-accommodationists” on the other side will have won, since causal processes being responsible for life will have lost. That would be an enormous loss, and if it is unlikely any time soon, I still think it behooves all on our side not to make evolution the hinge upon which both religion and science swings–mainly because evolution is far too limited to by itself determine questions such as “god.”
Glen Davidson
http://electricconsciousness.tripod.com
June 18th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
…I think it’s quite clear that Galileo was a theist…
Clear on what basis?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but being able to determine something like this would mean knowing something about theology–something atheists speak with omniscience about, but also make their ignorance about it a point of pride.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/reality.png
Science and religion are orthogonal.
June 18th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I forgot to add to my comment that we don’t have to wonder what he’d think because he left a record of what he DID think
June 18th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Should be very interesting.
Biagioli wrote a highly influential book saying that Galileo was a mathematician – a lowly type – who elevated himself to the the level of courtier with the status of a philosopher – in part by putting down opposing courtiers. He fell, Biagioli writes, in the way that favorites often did, loosing the favor of his patron, in this case a pope.
What would Galileo think today?
His fight was with an entrenched and authoritarian Aristotelianism, the established mindset of the day. The established philosophical mindset of today is secularism of the type that the new atheism embraces, simplifies, and valorizes. Would he fight against that?
Of course, he would have no truck with ID and creationism.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
I think I need to give the same answer I use when people ask “What would the founding fathers of the US say if they could see the country now?”
If Galileo were here today, he would say “Holy Shit! Airplanes!!!”
June 18th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
If Galileo were here today, he would say “Holy Shit! Airplanes!!!”
Somehow, I don’t think that would be his only observation.
June 19th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Whatever we speculate about what he would have thought is really only telling us about ourselves. Which is what’s really interesting about doing that kind of thing.
He was clearly within the mainline of informed, progressive Catholic thinking of his time.
It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned.
the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects;
The allegorical nature of a lot of the bible had been held to be obvious since Augustine.
About science he said:
I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense?experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word
nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature’s actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible
In other words, he wasn’t a biblical literalist, he believed in God in the aspect of a Creator and Holy Spirit and almost certainly believed Jesus was part of a trinity, and he also believed that the natural world was an expression of divine will and what happened was part of intention, but :
…. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense?experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects;
In other words, taking the bible as a literal record, of the kind you need when you do science, is incompatible with science. In other words, you can’t use the bible when you’re doing science because that’s not what it was made for.
From what we know, he’d be a scientific purist in that he’d keep religion and other non-essential truths out of whatever science was done, but outside of it he knew there was no reason to restrict yourself in that way. Which is the position of people who believe in both religion and in evolution but who know science can’t incorporate religious teaching.
He’d be against religious instruction during science class but he would almost certainly not have any problem with science being used to inform religion, or politics or any other area of life compatible with it.
The trouble he had with the Pope was probably far more about the authority of a Pope who had stated he intended to be an absolute monarch, in a time when the papacy was a lot more about politics than religion. The reformation was going on, including those wars everyone likes to use against religion. The absolute authority of the Pope was under threat. The extent to which Galileo’s trial was about a clash of real religion and how much it was about the Vatican’s famous immovability when it deals with overturning it’s own decisions and the authority of the incumbent pope isn’t ever going to be clear. Galileo had been trying for years to get the previous suppression of the Copernican model of the solar system over turned by the same institution that had imposed it during a time when the Vatican establishment was trying to defend itself.
I’d imagine it was like trying to get a really autocratic department head who was defending himself against a rival to admit in public that he’d made an embarrassing mistake about something he really didn’t care about. Only the Pope at the time could torture and execute people like any other monarch. Now, that in someone who was supposedly upholding the teachings of Jesus is a real scandal, not that he wouldn’t have believed in the Copernican model or found its acceptance an important issue. It didn’t change much on a practical level in daily life, they weren’t sending people into outer space, after all. I do think if they were planted here, airplanes would be one of the things they were most interested in.
June 19th, 2009 at 11:33 am
[...] interesting stuff came up last night at the launch of the Franklin Institute Galileo symposium–but for now I’ll just highlight one central matter that dominated much of the [...]
June 25th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I Wonder What Galileo Is Doing Tonight……
I find it irresistible not to at least take a moment to wonder aloud what Galileo is doing tonight. My hope would be that the great man is resting in peace and that his head is not spinning in his grave. How, now, can Galileo possibly find peace when so many top-rank scientists refuse to speak out clearly, loudly and often regarding whatsoever they believe to be true about the distinctly human predicament presented to humanity in our time by the unbridled “overpopulation, overconsumption and overproduction activities of the human species……the human-induced predicament that looms ominously and threatens to engulf the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit?
Where are more leaders like Jim Hansen who are willing to support the good science of human population dynamics and climate change that is being presented in the solid scientific observations and consensually validated empirical data?
Perhaps there is something in the great work of Dr. James Hansen that will give Galileo a moment of peace.
What would the world we inhabit be like if scientists like Galileo had adopted a code of silence or selectively mined data or manufactured controversy or passed along disinformation or else relied upon logically contrived ‘scientific’ evidence which was untrue but useful because this ‘evidence’ was politically convenient, religiously tolerated, economically expedient, and socially correct?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/