Talk:Galileo affair

The Earth

From Earth:
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Addition to "List of artistic treatments"

I would like to add the entry below to the "List of artistic treatments" section; however, I don't appear to have sufficient permissions.

Galileo [1] is a rock musical written Danny Strong [2] with an original rock score and lyrics by Michael Weiner [3] and Zoe Sarnak. It was first performed in 2024 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre [4] where it was directed by Michael Mayer [5], and starred Raúl Esparza [6] as Galileo.

Note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei already includes the following: A rock musical about Galileo's life, called Galileo, premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in May 2024. Michael Mayer directed the musical, which had a book by Danny Strong and music and lyrics by Zoe Sarnak and Michael Weiner. Raúl Esparza starred as Galileo. Halcabes (talk) 05:37, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

This is pure WP:TRIVIA and thus it should not be present in a WP article. Veverve (talk) 12:20, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

The myth of the Galileo affair lives large on Wikipedia

The article doesn't waste any time:

"Galileo was prosecuted for his support of heliocentrism, the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the universe."

This makes it sound like Galileo had compelling evidence for heliocentrism and that the Church, feeling threatened by the new evidence, tried to silence him. As we will see, this is very far from reality.

"Galileo's discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be "formally heretical".''

And he was also met with opposition from virtually all of his scientific contemporaries; Galileo was an exception to the then-consensus that heliocentric models were flawed cosmology. His observations (or "discoveries") regarding the moons of Jupiter and phases of Venus were no doubt consistent with the Copernican model, but they were also predicted by Tycho Brahe's model in which the planets circled around the sun, while the sun itself orbited a fixed Earth. So, the Tychonic system predicted the same Venusian phases that Galileo observed, and was published two decades before Galileo observed Venus evolving into a crescent (the same observations were made independently by at least 3 other astronomers, none of whom supported the Copernican model -see Simon Marius). This deflects from the fact that the notion that the Earth itself was in motion was regarded as utterly absurd in Galileo's lifetime, not just by clergy but virtually everyone working in mathematical astronomy (more on this below).

In the section on modern views of Galileo's "scientific arguments" it begins:

"While Galileo never claimed that his observations themselves directly proved heliocentrism to be true, they were significant evidence in its favor and removed many of the objections of the day; more importantly, they were devastating to the Aristotelian model."

Devastating? Number one, they were not "significant evidence" (see above), and secondly, Aristotelian cosmology, which posited a common center of rotation for all celestial bodies, was already violated by the Ptolemaic epicycle-deferent model. This, again, says nothing about the truth or falsehood of geocentric or heliocentric cosmology.

The fact is, there was nothing Galileo could've observed at the time that would've flipped the consensus to favor heliocentrism. While modern science requires empirical evidence, science at the turn of the 17th Century and even in Newton's age favored mathematical theory over observation. Galileo conceptualized the idea of calculus (as did Democritus and Archimedes ~2000 years prior), but he had no formalized way of calculating continuous, instantaneous change (ie nonlinear slopes). What was needed was a new mathematics to associate gravitational pull with geometry, and anything short of that would've never convinced scientists that a moving, spinning Earth wouldn't fling people out to space. Galileo actually died the day Newton was born, so the math simply didn't exist.

About the only observation that probably would've demonstrated the revolution of the Earth about the sun (to the satisfaction of 17th Century scientists) is the annual stellar parallax, as it was long known that a planet in orbit would produce a minute effect in the position of stars as the Earth's vantage point changed over the course of a year. But the technology to detect the parallax of stars didn't exist in the 17th Century and the phenomenon wasn't officially observed until 1838 -although by that time it wasn't even a big deal, as virtually all astronomers had long been convinced of heliocentrism since the mathematical proofs of Newton and Leibniz were published. Copernicus was aware of the stellar parallax problem and asserted, quite rightly, that it was unobservable because the stars (which were really distant suns) were too far away and the changes too tiny. Unfortunately, science doesn't work on assertion.

Also in this section, Maurice Finocchiaro is cited to support this statement:

"According to Finocchiaro, defenders of the Catholic church's position have sometimes attempted to argue, unsuccessfully, that Galileo was right on the facts but that his scientific arguments were weak or unsupported by evidence of the day; Finocchiaro rejects this view, saying that some of Galileo's key epistemological arguments are accepted fact today"

I'm not one to defend any church or religious apologist, but they happen to be right on the point that Galileo's evidence was weak. And in any event, Finocchiaro also states that "moving Earth" models were widely viewed as "philosophical absurdity" and offers absolutely no evidence of any shift in consensus on the basis of Galileo's work (never mind that his scientific reasoning -and conclusions -is accepted as valid today, it isn't clear this was the case at the time). The myth of the Galileo Affair was that it was a classic science vs religion ordeal (see Conflict thesis), which obscures a more complicated picture that scholars like Finocchiaro try to correct (although he often exaggerates the significance of Galileo's discoveries). There were bishops sympathetic to Galileo's ideas while most scientists were not, while the Church had good scientific reasons to doubt him.

I apologize for the length of this post but there are so many confused, garbled statements in this article that I felt detailed context was necessary before citing sources. To close I'd offer the work of science historian James C. Ungureanu who's published at least one book on this subject and several journal articles:

"As many contemporary historians of science have argued, including Maurice A. Finocchiaro in his article in Galileo goes to Jail, the Church had understandable reasons for refusing to accept Galileo’s heliocentric model of the solar system: Galileo was unable to produce the proof he needed; the waters were also muddied by Galileo’s academic enemies and by several misunderstandings, basic mistakes, missed opportunities, and complex theological debates"[7]. Jonathan f1 (talk) 06:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

You don't waste any time:

You quote the article sentence "Galileo was prosecuted for his support of heliocentrism, the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the universe." and then you say "This makes it sound like Galileo had compelling evidence for heliocentrism." I stopped reading at that point. - DVdm (talk) 12:31, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Heliocentrism has been settled science for centuries, but that was far from the case in Galileo's lifetime. This is not clear to the average reader, who may have no understanding of how modern astronomy developed and may have heard the myths that Galileo "proved heliocentrism" and was then thrown in a papal dungeon. Because, science. Jonathan f1 (talk) 18:06, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

These are good points which are corroborated by the rest of the article, you seem to understand the subject well (I also studied it for about 6 months in college). Only thing I'd like to point out is that the existence of the Ptolemaic model predating Galileo, or the models of Eudoxus or Anaximander for that matter, does not mean that Galileo's findings were not significant evidence against the Aristotlean model on their own (on philosophical grounds at least).

It seems like a reasonable change could be to reformat or expand upon the last sentence of the introduction, "Historians of science have corrected numerous false interpretations of the affair". The citations on it provide the same kind of context that you give in your post: "... one of the most common myths widely held about the trial of Galileo ... that his crime was to have discovered the truth. And to condemn someone for this reason can result only from ignorance...". This is a direct quote from Finocchiaro! It's definitely not being covered up. But, I know most people don't actually read citations closely, so you could maybe argue a change is warranted. I'm not sure how it could be done while avoiding bias, so I'll leave that up to more experienced editors. I just wanted to give my opinion. HEH9001 (talk) 12:58, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, Finocchiaro seems to have been quote mined which raises NPOV issues. He is used selectively to bolster the Galilean narrative but is ignored on all the points he's made to dispute it. I mean, he wrote a whole chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (ed. R. Numbers, Harvard, 2009, pp. 68-79))[8], but it is unclear from this article that there is even any "myth" or controversy in the first place.

Two points should be emphasized:

• The Inquisition targeted Galileo for a range of complex reasons, some of them to do with science, many of them not. Refer to Ungureanu's piece linked above where he cites social and political context for the Galileo affair. A case could even be made that Galileo was targeted less for his science and more for his arrogance and seemingly innate ability to piss people off. The Inquisition wanted to make an example of the "little mathematicus" but never had any intention of torturing or executing him.
• The Church had sound, scientific reasons to doubt heliocentrism. The source of most skepticism over the Copernican model was that there was no mathematical explanation for gravitational pull. It is one thing to demonstrate that a totally uninhabited "celestial body" like Venus or Jupiter is in orbit, but quite another to say the Earth is moving without being able to explain mathematically why people don't fall off. Galileo couldn't produce this, despite the fact that he was primarily a mathematician, and so heliocentrism remained what Finocchiaro called a "philosophical absurdity" to most astronomers. Combine this with the fact that a moving Earth would produce an effect on the position of fixed "stars" (which, little did they know, are really distant suns fixed in position like our own) as its vantage point changed, and that this was unobservable with 17th Century instruments, and it's quite clear how weak Galileo's case really was. We're talking about a hypothesis that had no mathematical explanation (at a time when the mathematics required to explain gravity didn't even exist) and no direct empirical evidence (Galileo's observations of Venus and Jupiter were received as indirect evidence and highly speculative -not to mention they were also predicted by alternative geostatic models like the Tychonic system).

Here is perhaps the biggest irony in all this from a scientific pov: while much has been made of Galileo's "discoveries", the actual smoking-gun observation, the stellar parallax, didn't occur until the 19th Century, and when it did not one astronomer broke out the champagne, not one made a peep. And the reason for this is because astronomers had been convinced of heliocentrism for ~150 years at that point, based on Newton's mathematical proofs. It was the invention of calculus by Newton and Leibniz that produced an explanation of gravity and led to the development of modern astronomical science (and other branches of physics), not Galileo's telescope. By the time the parallax of stars was observed, it merely confirmed what astronomers had long believed.

In fact, if anyone had a scientific consensus on their side in the early 17th Century, it was not Galileo but, ironically, the Church. This too is addressed by Ungureanu. Jonathan f1 (talk) 19:20, 19 June 2024 (UTC)