The Ponsard controversy in France, which had hardly died out at the latest advices, produced many assertions, strong expression of weak theories, loose statement, some fine writing, pleasing amenities, such as "exagération," "inexactitude de transcription," "menteurs," "mensonge complet," and very little historical proof.
Throughout the entire range of the discussion one capital feature appears, as usual, to be left totally out of sight. We mean
The Condition Of The Scientific Question.
The theory of the earth's motion, A.D. 1868, is demonstrated. There is no one to question it—unless, indeed, we except Pastor Knaack, an orthodox Lutheran, or, at any rate, Protestant preacher, in Berlin, who lately had an exciting controversy with Pastor Liscow, in which he maintains that the accounts given of the creation of the world in the first chapters of Genesis are literally true; that the earth does not move, etc., etc. And most persons nowadays, taking it for granted that Galileo had demonstrated the truth of his system, appear to be satisfied that the tribunal by which he was judged must have been perversely blind and disgracefully ignorant in refusing assent to a proposition so evident. Even in many books that treat this discussion with comparative thoroughness, the true condition of the scientific question in Galileo's day is passed over in silence, or presented with startling incorrectness. Thus any one might read Dr. Parchappe's pretentious work carefully through, and never suspect that Galileo had not triumphantly demonstrated the system.
For another, out of many examples, listen to M. Philarète Chasles: "Galileo accomplished the noblest conquest of modern science after that of Newton. He determined the problem of the movement of the earth, and thus became culpable of three crimes—against society, the savants, and the power of his time." So intent is M. Chasles on his antithetical three crimes, that he loses sight of the fact that this assertion prostrates the whole échafaudage of his defence of Rome—for, ultra-liberal though he be, his book is written with unusual fairness of intention. If Galileo did what M. Chasles thus claims for him—namely, determine the problem of the movement of the earth—there is no excuse for Rome! But a candid examination of the condition of astronomical science at that period, and of the extent of Galileo's acquisitions, will show that not only was
The System Not Demonstrated By Galileo,
but that, with the entire fund of astronomical and physical knowledge in existence in his day, it was not then susceptible of demonstration by him or by any one else.
This examination we now proceed to make. And we set out with the proposition that Galileo, with all the aid of the eighty years of confirmation that grew with the theory of Copernicus, with the light of his own remarkable discoveries, with his brilliant genius and intimate conviction of the truth of his theory, was yet not only powerless to prove it, but was so far wide of demonstration that he assigned as evidence in its support reasons that were utterly erroneous and delusive.
The truth is—and it is no derogation of Galileo's magnificent talent to say so—it was not given to any single intellect here below to solve a problem so gigantic. It was not possible for any mortal to concentrate the patient labor of centuries within the space of one short life, to master all the avenues of all the sciences that approach it, to storm the firmament and lead captive the stars. No! only the combined genius and ceaseless toil of the illustrious men of science of all Christendom barely succeeded in accomplishing the demonstration of which we speak, nearly two centuries after the grave had closed over Galileo and his judges.