Statue of Galileo Planned for Vatican

Reservoir Hill writes "Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the scientist by erecting a statue of him inside Vatican walls. The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated. He was held there while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The move coincides with a series of celebrations in the run-up to next year's 400th anniversary of Galileo's development of the telescope. In January Pope Benedict XVI called off a visit to Sapienza University, Rome, after staff and students accused him of defending the Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo. The Vatican said that the Pope had been misquoted and since the episode, several of the professors have retracted their protest."

cool

We won't live to see Darwin's statue, but this is a start!

Re:cool

As far as I know, the catholic church is one of the few christian institutions that doesn't take issue with darwin, they contend something about a moment of divine intervention during evolution or something. Now I'm pretty damn tired right now, so someone else feel free to correct me :-p

Re:cool

You are correct. In fact, it seems that the vast majority of Christian institutions, and institutions of other religions, do not take issue with evolution. It's the Discovery Institute [wikipedia.org] who takes issue with the notion of evolution. They've manufactured the idea a controversy over evolution, when no such controversy exists.

Re:cool

To be specific we're talking about controversy in scientific circles, I think it's safe to say that there's plenty of controversy in the public, unfortunately.

Re:cool

Well, certainly there are lots of people who individually take issue with evolution. There are also lots of people who individually believe they've been abducted by aliens. That doesn't mean there's any controversy over alien abductions.

Re:cool

It seems to be your assertion that there exists a legitimate scientific controversy over how the species of life that exist today came into being. What is the hypothesis that is proposed as the serious scientific alternative to evolution? What predictions does it make? How would we test whether that hypothesis is incorrect? What sort of evidence would prove that the hypothesis is wrong?

Re:cool

You are correct. In fact, it seems that the vast majority of Christian institutions, and institutions of other religions, do not take issue with evolution.

You must be new here. Everyone who ever posts on /. knows that all Christians, theists and, basically, anyone religious -- or who has ever been religious at all -- is a complete, uneducated moron. No one who has ever believed theistically has ever contributed anything, whatsoever, to science, knowledge, understanding or the promotion of the human race.

There, I said it. Now do me!

Re:cool

The Galileo incident had nothing to do w/ evolution, but you are correct that evolution is not inconsistent w/ Church teaching. Many people misunderstand the real issue behind the problem the church had w/ Galileo. It had nothing to do w/ the basic contention that the earth revolved about the sun. Copernius (a Catholic priest) proposed heliocentricity about a 100 years before the Galileo incident. The concept was generally accepted by most educated people (including members of the Church hierarchy) at the time. Galileo strayed from purely scientific examinations to drawing *religious* conclusions based on the contradiction between scripture and scientific fact. The Vatican had asked him to refrain from drawing religious conclusions (the responsibility of the Church) and stick to scientific fact. Galileo agreed, but later fell back to the religious aspects. The Church's position was that it required time to resolve the apparent conflict b/w scripture and science. This is one reason why the Catholic Church does not promote *literal* belief in the bible. The bible's inerrent truth applies to spiritual matters only, not scientific or historical facts. A description of the sun and the rest of the universe revolving around the earth does not detract from the spiritual truth that each human soul is known individually to a loving and caring God.

I'm a little bothered

It's one thing for the Vatican to apologise for its past mistreatment of a figure like Galileo, but erecting a statue of him? I don't know - it seems almost sensationalist. If I'd been tortured and mistreated by an institution, I wouldn't want them to have a statue of me as a tourist attraction! Faith will always be against certain types of scientific enquiry, and I think the Vatican should be honest enough to admit so rather than making an almost-martyr of this one famous figure in order to garner public approval.

Re:I'm a little bothered

If I'd been tortured and mistreated by an institution, I wouldn't want them to have a statue of me as a tourist attraction!

Galileo wasn't tortured.

He was a personal friend of the then Pope, and got prosecuted not because he divulged Heliocentrism itself. Other Heliocentrists at the time didn't have any problem with the Church, and in fact some of them were funded by the Church itself. He was prosecuted:

a) Because he insisted that all the details of his theory, such as that, despite Kepler, whose works he read but dismissed, planetary orbits are perfectly circular since circles are "perfect" and ellipses aren't, were absolute certainties, even though he couldn't prove any of them (the first actual proof of any version of Heliocentrism appeared only in the 19th century, 200+ years after Galileo's time);

b) Because he thought that everyone should accept his hypothesis just because, no matter the lack of proofs;

c) And because he did make the point clear by adding a character to his book, named "Simpleton", who "defended" Geocentrism by mocking actual speeches of his friend the Pope, what Galileo cluelessly hoped he would find funny, not offensive. Obviously, it didn't happen.

Considering that at the time people were tortured and burned for doing much less, being held in his own house was a very soft punishment. The Church really wasn't harsh on him. It's only by comparing what Galileo was subjected to with 20th century style freedom of speech that one finds it "evil". But comparing it to what was the standard practices in the 17th century puts things in a very different light.

Citation needed!

It's true Galileo wasn't tortured, but the rest of this seriously misrepresents his thought.

Galileo basically disproved Aristotelianism - the belief that the Universe was made of 5 elements, that 4 of them comprised the corruptible lower Universe, and that the perfect outer Universe was made of the 5th element. He did this experimentally by pointing a telescope at the supposedly perfect bodies and showing that they had surface features.

He also identified the orbits of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, thus demonstrating that, in the Universe, small bodies could orbit round a large one. He showed that a system of satellites was not unique.

He also did valuable early work in dynamics - the cannon ball story is long exploded - by building precise apparatus and timing systems for measuring the movement of balls rolling down slopes. It was not his fault that he did not know that gravitational potential energy was partly converted into rotational kinetic energy as well as translational energy, or that, in the absence of a definition of velocity, he did not get the formulae of motion into their modern forms. It is also not his fault that he got frustrated because the reaction of the people who he tried to demonstrate his evidence to was, in effect, to stick their hands over their ears and scream "can't hear you". It is also not his fault that Kepler was addicted to mystical ideas (such as that the orbits of the planets fit inside a nesting of the Platonic solids), and lacked a modern marthematical framework, which, at the time, greatly obscured the value of what he was doing.

As for suggesting that Galileo would "cluelessly" hope the Pope would find Simpleton funny, anybody who knows anything about Italian society at that era would know that to be nonsense. This was a society in which men fought to the death over perceived insults. My guess is that Galileo hoped the Pope would see arguments he supported being made by an idiot, and decide to forget about them quietly.

However, the Inquisition and its mates had far too much invested in Aristotle (and not being made to look ridiculous) and the rest is history.

Revisiting this before posting I am tempted to add that there is a great deal of misunderstanding of people like Newton, Galileo and Kepler due to anachronism. They did not live in a modern society, they did not have access to modern mathematics, instruments and communications. You cannot write about them without researching their background. But, believe me, if you do it is endlessly fascinating and there is much to learn for our own time. There is a huge amount of published material, in fact these were guys who could write their own books. They are worth reading. Both the Dialogue (Galileo) and at least part of the Principia (Newton) should be on every nerd's reading list, if only because it cures you of the idea that everything exciting in science happened since 1940.

i want a giordano bruno statue

while galileo was only imprissoned and threatend with torture, giordano bruno [wikipedia.org] was murdered by the chruch...

Thunderbolt and lightning! Very very frightening!

Galileo!

The Museum of History of Science

The proper place for the statue is surely outside the Museum of the History of science at Florence. This ought to be on the itinerary of any self-respecting nerd visiting Italy. They have some of Galileo's own equipment, and a religious relic - a finger bone of the man himself. They have a full size model of his gravitational experiment (no jokes about cannonballs please) and the last time I visited there was an Italian school party there getting an accurate account of his experiments from their enthusiastic woman science teacher. It's even better than the Whipple in Cambridge, which is in some ways a temple to Newton, because you really get the sense of just how exciting and disruptive Galileo's thought actually was. If you read the Dialogue on Two World Systems, you rapidly realise that Galileo was a modern man who today would be on television being incredibly rude and funny about Kansas boards of education. (This is not hype. You only need to read his letters to Kepler to realise that what probably really pissed off the Pope and the Inquisition wasn't that he said they were wrong, but that he made jokes about their ideas.)

Sadly for Giordano Bruno, he didn't have Galileo's powerful protectors and was a bit too all-out mystical. Roger Bacon just got locked up for years for suggesting that Arab science should be adopted to ease the work of the poor - can't have peasants having free time to think about things. However, the Church at least has a history of adopting ideas once they've been safely mainstream for a few hundred years. Some of the Protestant sects seem intent on actually going backwards, hence the drive towards Bible literalism (which wouldn't have been understood by most of the early Church fathers, but is a peculiar product of 19th century Protestantism separated by an ocean from its roots.)

The other side of this (Pope) Urban legend?

There's another side to the Galileo debate - that he was the victim of a political persecution by fellow scientists who felt Galileo was making fools out of them. It was they, not the church, who put forward the idea that Heliocentrism would lead to sun worship. Galileo kept much of his research secret not because he feared the Church, but because he feared the rebuke of his fellow scientists.

Read here:

http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/scheiner.html [rice.edu]

Also read this excerpt from Columbia Humanities Professor Robert Nisbet:

http://www.bible-researcher.com/nisbet1.html [bible-researcher.com]

My my

A fully erect Galileo in the Vatican Garden. It sems hard to belive.

Breath of fresh air...

I know the Catholic church has it's dark side in history, however, I'm very pleased that one of the worlds foremost religion is doing such a fantastic job 'respecting' science. Before you blast me with examples of how the Catholic church is blundering (big bang?), remember that they are (as far as I know), the only _major_ Christian church that supports evolution. Furthermore, I do have a lot of respect for the Jesuits and their pursuit of science. Finally, the Vatican may not 100% pro-science, but they seem far from being anti-science.

Though I'm not Catholic (atheist), I respect the Vatican for trying to understand how science merge with their faith, instead of bending science to their faith. Considering the horror stories that I see and hear about creationist faith (cringe!), this is a breath of fresh air!

My $0.02 CAD

traditional greeting....

I hope Galileo is celebrated with his right arm raised and his middle finger extended, in the time honored way. I'm sure if he were alive that's what he would want.

Void Where Prohibited by Newton's Law

What will the inscription on the statue read? Something like

The Church reserves the right to excommunicate you for 400 years if the facts interfere with Its absolute powers.

200 years of those facts becoming common knowledge, at the expense of Its absolute powers, notwithstanding.

Re:They've got to be kidding

These kind of news really pisses me off. A statue to Galileo 400 years late? WTF?

Well, to be fair, they are erecting a statue of Bob Johnson. Never heard of him, according to prophets, he is going to do something great in 400 years.

That should pretty much even things out for you.

Re:They've got to be kidding

They could also get rid of child molesters and stop paying (lots of) money to keep things under wraps, which obviously is not the best way to solve the problem.

They should take their cue from the public school system. According to The New York Post July 30, 2001 - in NYC between January 1999 and June 2001 there were 212 children victims of child molestation by teachers. In 45% of the cases, the sex offender attacked more than one student. In nearly 16% of the cases, school officials delayed or tried to cover up the sexual molestations.

According to the New York Times - June 12, 1988, there were 135 cases of sexual molestation by priests were reported from 1983 to 1986.

Time frames are different, but in one city there were more reported child molestations in the public schools than in the catholic church nationwide.

Re:They've got to be kidding

Point of order (which may affect how you think about this topic): Galileo was not, as is commonly believed, imprisoned for advocating heliocentrism. He was imprisoned for using a Papal imprimatur on the book where he advocated it. This was equivalent to saying the Church endorsed his position, and it had actually not taken a side in an active scientific debate (ring any bells?). The Pope was a friend of his and Galileo had convinced him to give him the imprimatur on the book, sight unseen, after Galileo had promised the book would be even-handed.

Whether or not that's something to fix or apologize for... up to you. I'd think of it as more of an anniversary story (400 is a big one) rather than an "apology" story.

It's even funnier than that

It's even funnier than that. And in fact, so funny, that I propose to have Galileo sanctified as patron saint of nerds and OS zealots.

Well, as you correctly note: the Pope was actually a friend of Galileo's originally and was actually a pretty open minded guy. He actually listened to Galileo, and although he wasn't convinced about this radical departure from all existing science, actually encouraged him to write about it. All the pope did ask for, was that Galileo presents both points of view fairly -- his _and_ the Aristotelian one -- and, basically, explains exactly what his own system explains better than the old one. Which is IMHO very much in line even with the modern scientific method.

Galileo, however, reacted like your average run-of-the-mill self-righteous nerd. He was incensed that the pope didn't immediately see that he's right. The book he wrote, yes, presented both points of view. However the old system was distorted and ridiculed. But the real faux pas was: he distorted the Pope's words and put them in the mouth of a character called Simplicius. I.e., pretty much "The Stupid". This character was furthermore portrayed as, basically, a stupid simpleton who couldn't grasp even elementary logic, and got repeatedly caught up in his own errors. That was the defender of the Aristotelian view in Galileo's book. (Which incidentally also presented the Pope as the zealot of a dogma where he was actually very much neutral.)

In a nutshell, Galileo thoroughly flamed the Pope. In public. In some of the most annoying ways possible. If someone did that on Slashdot, he'd end up at -5 Flamebait in 5 minutes flat.

What followed, well, basically had nothing to do with science-vs-religion. It's at most a case of why totalitarian power is bad. The Pope was an absolute monarch in Rome, and Galileo flamed him on his own turf. People ended up with their head on a spike for _much_ lesser offenses towards secular kings just as well. By contrast, Galileo ended up only with house arrest.

The accusation of heresy was mostly just a heavy-handed abuse of the law, to make it fall under the Pope's own tribunals' jurisdiction. (Things which weren't of a religious nature, otherwise fell under the jurisdiction of the secular authorities.) But make no mistake, it wasn't about science _or_ heresy. It was simply that the Pope didn't take lightly to heavy-handed public ridicule.

And if I'm to be a supporter of science in the whole science-vs-religion circus, I'd actually say the opposite: Galileo there actually did science a disservice. He created a conflict with the church where one hadn't existed before. The pope (and popes) before couldn't care less what rotates around what. The pope only became opposed to heliocentrism all of a sudden, so he could prosecute Galileo for the thorough public flaming. The whole incident _created_ an official position and a precedent, where one didn't have to exist, and turned the church from a potential supporter of the whole thing to an (at least implied) enemy.

So, yeah, I propose Galileo for sanctification. It's about time we too had our patron saint ;)

Re:The church IS a dictatorship

I'm fine with the Church being a dictatorship as long as it only affects their followers. I've got a problem when they support a militar dictator that oppresses a whole country, though.

Re:Vatican, Church....

True.
And the universe in Animal Farm was fictional, and therefore had nothing of value to say.