Happy Birthday Galileo!

On this day in 1564, Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa.

Galileo and the so-called "Galileo Affair" have been favourite soap-boxes of mine for quite some time. People who know me well generally know not to get me started. People who don't know me well and make the mistake of commenting on how badly the Church treated Galileo generally regret it. I'm not exactly sure when this interest of mine began, however. The earliest exposure I had to the name of Galileo, as far as I can remember, would have been a song by the Christian pop singer Amy Grant. This would have been back when I was in primary school, when I was about 10 years old. I remember going to a concert of hers - she was touring after the release of her album Heart in Motion. One of my favourite songs on the album (I still enjoy it!) is called "Galileo." It has cute lyrics:

In the year of fourteen ninety-two
When Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Had he landed on India's shore
You might never have come to knock on my door.

Who needs a rhyme or a reason?
Some dreams were made to find
So I know that I must follow

Ask me just how much I love you
You are starlight, I'm Galileo
Even on the darkest night oh
I will find the shining light of our love.

I'm not sure if I found out much more about Galileo during primary school. The next time I encountered his story, as far as I can remember, was in my first year at university. I was enrolled in a Bachelor of Medical Science, but I decided to take some Science and Technology Studies subjects as electives. (It sounded more interesting than physics, psychology or computer science, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made!) The first subject I took was called Cosmos and Culture, and it was an overview of the history of science from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century. It was all very new to me, but I was loving it. We got to the Copernican Revolution and Galileo the week before our major essay was due, but I was fascinated enough to abandon my research on Aristotle in order to write about whether the Copernican Revolution was indeed a revolution. I'm still amused that I relied heavily on Thomas Kuhn's 1957 classic The Copernican Revolution without knowing anything of its significance or that of the follow-up, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But that's another story.

The main thing I remember hearing about Galileo is this class was how the Church had condemned him as a heretic on the basis of just one short passage from Scripture:

Joshua 10:12-14 - At that time Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the LORD obeyed the voice of a man, for the LORD fought for Israel.

The message I received from this class was the Galileo was condemned as a heretic because the Church insisted on a literal interpretation of this passage. Of course the sun moves! Joshua wouldn't have told the sun to stop moving if it had actually been the earth that was moving - he would have told the earth to stop spinning! And because of this, science and religion became mortal enemies, as they still are. I remember thinking how stupid the Church was, and how it was responsible for the conflict between science and religion, just because they insisted on a literal interpretation of a verse that was obviously not meant to be taken as a scientific statement.

Such was my initial understanding of the "Galileo Affair." I was 18 years old, a first-year university student who had not yet even embarked on my career as an aspiring historian of science. I was still planning to study medicine to become an anaesthesiologist at that stage! But just as my continuing studies convinced me that I should head down a different path, so they also showed me that the "Galileo Affair" was not as straightforward as it first seemed.

While Galileo is often referred to as the "father of modern science," it is difficult to classify him as a scientist, or even a natural philosopher, as the people who studied the natural world were known at that time. Galileo was primarily a mathematician, although he sought the title of "philosopher" as they were more highly paid.

Galileo excelled at cultivating favour with the aristocracy, through his performances in debates, dedications of important works, and gifts of instruments such as the telescope. Contrary to popular belief, Galileo did not invent the telescope, nor was he the first person to use it in looking at the heavens - just perhaps the most outspoken! However good Galileo was at increasing his public profile, he was also very good at making enemies. His performances in debates often left his opponents looking stupid - a good thing for his patrons, but not when he needed crucial support from the academic community.

In his short book, Galileo, Stillman Drake argued that Galileo's condemnation by the Inquisition in 1633 was not a result of his defiance of the Church, but was rather caused by the hostility of contemporary philosophers. We are so conditioned to view the "Galileo Affair" as the result of an inevitable conflict between science and religion that this may come as a shock, but this is not a new perspective. Drake's book was first released in 1980, though the 2001 "Very Short Introduction" edition still labelled this as "a startling reinterpretation of the evidence."

If I go into too much detail here, this post will become far too long. I suspect that many people have already stopped reading! But here's a few points, just to whet your appetite.

We need to remember that this was a troubled time for the Church. The Reformation had challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, particularly with regard to the interpretation of Scripture. However, Pope Urban VIII, the one who eventually unleashed the Inquisition on to Galileo, was initially a huge fan. He even wrote a poem about Galileo, and gave him permission to write the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems which eventually landed Galileo in hot water. Galileo made the mistake of putting the Pope's favourite argument into the mouth of Simplicio - the character in the dialogue who is indeed shown to be a simpleton. Urged on by Galileo's philosophical enemies, the Pope was not pleased. Even Cardinal Bellarmine - arch-Counter-Reformationist - who was intimately involved in the early years of the "Galileo Affair" but who had passed away before the 1633 trial, was prepared to at least consider reinterpreting certain passages of the Bible, so long as there was good reason... but Galileo had no real evidence.

Wait a minute! No evidence? Didn't Galileo have his telescope? Common sense? The scientific method?? Well... that's going to take too long to explain thoroughly. Stay tuned for details on where you can find out more!

So there was a context of religious upheaval, and the Church was anxious to retain its authority. But what is "the Church"? There was no such monolithic institution. For starters, there were the Protestant and Catholic churches (emphasis on the plural), and even within each of these, there were differing viewpoints. And the idea of "the Church" suppressing science? What is this "science" you speak of? There was "natural philosophy" - a mode of natural inquiry much broader than what we view science as - and there were many varieties of this as well. And there were the mechanical sciences (again, emphasis on the plural) which weren't considered to be on the same explanatory level as natural philosophy. A conflict between science and religion? Which science? Which religion? You can see how it gets complicated.

It's probably more accurate to view the Galileo Affair as a conflict between "old science" and "new science" than between "science" and "religion." The academic establishment of the day, which happened to be closely aligned with the Catholic Church, but by no means homogeneous theologically, resisted Galileo's attempts to change the accepted view of how the universe worked. And since Galileo's evidence was rather less than compelling, perhaps they were the really "scientific" or "rational" ones after all.

But still, Galileo was a great thinker, and I am a big fan. I particularly like his way of looking at nature as the work of God, and seeking to understand it better in this context. And the "Galileo Affair" and his work and ideas are important for striving to understand how religious belief and scientific understanding of the natural world relate to each other.

Some key quotes:

Take note, theologians, that in your desire to makes matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of the sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position - eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still.
- Note added by Galileo in the preliminary leaves of his copy of Dialogue on the Great World Systems (1632)

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.
- The Assayer (1623)

But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them
- Letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (1615)

That's all for now, folks, but if you should wish to hear more, I will be "Revisiting the Galileo Affair" on Tuesday, April 17, as part of the CASE Christianity and Contemporary Thought lecture series. I hope to see you all there (although those who live in a different hemisphere will, of course, be excused).

Happy Birthday Pierre Gassendi!

On this day in 1592, Pierre Gassendi was born at Champtercier, near Digne, in France.

Gassendi was a mathematician, natural philosopher and theologian, most notable for his efforts in reviving and Christianising Epicurean atomism as an alternative to Aristotelianism. He was also a correspondent of Marin Mersenne - the postbox of the time - and of Rene Descartes. He wrote several objections to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy.

Barry Brundell, the Catholic priest/historian of science famous for impersonating the Pope and Cardinal Bellarmine in retrials of Galileo at UNSW, is an expert on Gassendi. He told me once about how he ended up as such. He said that he had an idea of the kind of argument he wanted to make in his PhD thesis, and the time period he was interested in. He didn't want to focus on anyone who had already been done to death by other historians, so he went searching through a library card catalogue (yes, it was back in those days) and came across Gassendi. Right time period, fitted the argument, had been neglected by historians... perfect! Ah, the wonders of academic research!

Happy Birthday Sir Francis Bacon!

On this day in 1561, Francis Bacon was born at York House in the Strand, London.

I would imagine that most people have at least heard of Francis Bacon. My first encounter with the name was as a young child listening to the hilarious Rinse the Blood Off My Toga by Wayne and Schuster - "with apologies to William Shakespeare... and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case." I laughed, of course, even though I didn't understand the joke!

My second encounter with Francis Bacon would have been an early History and Philosophy of Science class, most probably as the founder of the "scientific method."

I'm not too interested in "scientific method" - far too much influence from post-Kuhnian sociologists of science. My interest in Bacon lies in his thoughts on nature and religion.

The main point of my PhD thesis is to provide a re-interpretation or re-evaluation of natural theology - pointing out that it's a more complicated enterprise than historians have usually given it credit for, and suggesting a way forward for understanding it in all its complexities. (So really there is no 'it', but that's a topic for another time...)

One thing I've been struggling with is understanding what people actually meant by "natural" theology or "natural" religion. I'm not convinced that it's always framed in opposition to "revealed" religion or Scriptural theology. So, I was quite excited on the weekend when I finaly started reading Peter Harrison's 'Religion' and the religions in the English Enlightenment. The first chapter begins with a discussion of the various meanings of the term "nature" in the 17th and 18th centuries, reflected in different views on natural religion. For the Reformers, Harrison suggests, "natural" stood in stark contrast to "supernatural" and hence "natural religion" was a result of human sin, and was opposed to "revealed religion." For Francis Bacon, however, this opposition was invalid. Harrison quotes Bacon on the two senses of the "light of nature":

The one, that which springeth from reason, sense, induction, argument, according to the laws of heaven and earth; the other, that which is imprinted upon the spirit of man by an inward instinct, according to the law of conscience, which is a sparkle of purity of his first estate; in which the latter sense only he is participant of some light and discerning touching the perfection of the moral law.

That is, Bacon is using "natural" in the sense of something inherent to a person - not opposed to supernatural, since it is endowed by God. The Cambridge Platonists (still no action figures) adopted this use of natural reason, particularly evident in their favourite catchphrase - reason is "the Candle of the Lord" - derived from Proverbs 20:27. But again, that's a topic for another post.

In the near future, I'll try to write more about the Cambridge Platonists and the Candle of the Lord, and about the Reformers' views on nature and the supernatural. I'm intrigued by their dichtomy. But for the moment, suffice it to say, Happy Birthday Francis Bacon!


This is the second post in my series commemorating the birthdays of particular thinkers who I deem worthy of such an honour. (Actually, the thinkers are chosen from the Philosophers' Birthdays calendar I've subscribed to in iCal.) The first in this series was for Dr Samuel Clarke.

Happy Birthday Dr Clarke!

On this day in 1675 Samuel Clarke was born at Norwich, England.

Who is Samuel Clarke? I'm glad you asked!

Samuel Clarke was a theologian and natural philosopher, particularly well-known for his interest in Isaac Newton's work. My interest in Clarke lies primarily in the Boyle Lectures he presented in 1704 and 1705, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation.

Clarke was educated at the Norwich Free Grammar School (1685-90) and afterwards at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (10 points for the first person who can tell me which famous athlete was also educated at Caius!) At Cambridge, Clarke was noted for his encyclopaedic knowledge, "the range of his interests and his attempt to span all fields of knowledge in an age when science, and learning more generally, were increasingly becoming the province of the expert."

He was also one of the first people to understand Isaac Newton's famous Principia (Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). At this time, even people who agreed with Newton's ideas still tended to based their teaching on Rene Descartes' natural philosophy, which was more accessible. Clarke's tutor at Caius, John Ellis, asked him to translate into Latin a popular French textbook of Cartesian natural philosophy by Jacques Rohault - Traite de physique - so it could be used by students at Cambridge. Clarke performed this task, but amended the text with a series of Newtonian footnotes, correcting all the Cartesian errors.

While Clarke achieved the status of one of the Church of England's leading theologians and metaphysicians with his Boyle lectures, he was a rather controversial figure. He opposed the high-church preoccupation with religious ritual, suggesting the relative insignificance of sacramental practices when compared with those imposed by the moral order. He also opposed Calvinism, placing a strong emphasis on the role of reason in religion. However, he held firmly to the Protestant belief of judging doctrine by scripture alone, though this, for Clarke, led to a rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Like Newton, Clarke was theologically heterodox. In 1712, he published his doubts about the full divinity of Christ in The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity: Wherein Every Text in the New Testament relating to that Doctrine is Distinctly Considered. Clarke closely analysed some 1251 biblical texts and concluded that:

The Father Alone is Self-Existent, Underived, unoriginated, Independent

and that:

The Son is not self-existent; but derives his Being and All his Attributes From the Father, as from the Supreme Cause.

Interestingly, people who tried to persuade Clarke not to publish his work did so by appealing to his political loyalties. Clarke supported the Whig political order, and at a time when politics and religion were thoroughly intermingled, there were fears that Clarke's views could be used to damage the moral credibility of the party. However, in the face of theological dispute, Clarke agreed to modify the wording of his belief - a compromise that did not satisfy everyone, but avoided further conflict.

Samuel Clarke is perhaps most well known for his correspondence with the German philosophy Leibniz, in which he defended Isaac Newton against the charge that his work had contributed to a decline in natural religion in England - a claim that seems unusual in some ways, as Newton and his followers firmly believed that his natural philosophy supported the church. Clarke's work in this area won him the support of the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Ansbach. Caroline attempted to persuade Clarke to accept a bishopric, though he declined due to his heterodox beliefs on the Trinity. As John Gascoigne writes in his DNB article on Clarke,

Voltaire, who had met Clarke during his extended visit to England in the 1720s, later spread the unlikely but delightful story that the bishop of London had stopped Clarke's being made archbishop of Canterbury (on the death of Tenison in 1716) by telling the Queen, approvingly, that he thought Clarke was the best qualified man for the job, though he was not a Christian.

In his Boyle lectures, Samuel Clarke argued that "the being and attributes of God are not only possible or barely probably in themselves, but also strictly demonstrable to any unprejudiced mind from the most incontestable principles of right reason."

Note two key phrases here:

• "Unprejudiced mind" - if you reject these arguments, clearly you were prejudiced against the idea from the beginning
• "Incontestable principles of right reason" - I'm using my reason correctly; you are not.

One of the things I really like about writing from this period is how nasty they were to atheists. Clarke suggests that there are only three kinds of atheists:

• Atheists that are extremely stupid and ignorant, and have never made use of their natural reason to discover the plainest and most obvious truths
• Atheists that have had their reason corrupted by a vicious and degenerate life,
  
• "And instead of fairly and impartially enquiring into the rules and obligations of nature and the reasons and fitness of things, [they] have accustomed themselves only to mock and scoff at religion and, being under the power of evil habits and the slavery of unreasonable and indulged lusts, are resolved not to harken to any reasoning which would oblige them to forsake their beloved vices."
• Atheists who pretend that arguments against the being and attributes of God are strong and conclusive

Clarke claims that the third kind are the only ones who are capable of being reasoned with. And so he sets out to establish the existence and attributes of God by reason, but I won't go into all that because I'll be surprised if anyone has actually read this far! But I'll finish up with a quote from Clarke's conclusion (and when I get around to writing the Boyle Lecture chapter of my thesis next year, I might write more about this):

Yet the notices that God has bee pleased to give us of himself are so many and so obvious in the constitution, order, beauty, and harmony of the several parts of the world, in the frame and structure of our own bodies and the wonderful powers and faculties of our souls, in the unavoidable apprehensions of our own minds and the common consent of all other men, in everything within us and everything without us, that no man of the meanest capacity and greatest disadvantages whatsoever, with the slightest and most superficial observation of the works of God and the lowest and most obvious attendance to the reason of things, can be ignorant of him, but he must be utterly without excuse... [and God has provided] a clear and express revelation of himself in Christ suited to every capacity and understanding, [to] put to silence the ignorance of foolish and the vanity of sceptical and profane men... And so has infallibly furnished us with sufficient knowledge to enable us to perform our duty in this life, and to obtain our happiness in that which is to come.