History of scientific ideas

by William Whewell

[23] Bridgewater Tr. p. 314.

[24] Com. Stell. Mart. Introd.

13. Case of Galileo.—I may perhaps venture here to make a remark or two upon this subject with reference to a charge brought against a certain portion of the History of the Inductive Sciences. Complaint has been made[25] that the character of the Roman church, as shown in its behaviour towards Galileo, is misrepresented in the account given of it in the History of Astronomy. It is asserted that Galileo provoked the condemnation he incurred; first, by pertinaciously demanding the assent of the ecclesiastical authorities to his opinion of the consistency of the Copernican doctrine with Scripture; and afterwards by contumaciously, and, as we have seen, contumeliously violating the silence which the Church had enjoined upon him. It is further declared that the statement which represents it as the habit of the Roman church to dogmatize on points of natural science is unfounded; as well as the opinion that in consequence of this habit, new scientific truths were promulgated less boldly in Italy than in other countries. I shall reply very briefly on these subjects; for the decision of them is by no means requisite in order to establish the doctrines to which I have been led in the present chapter, nor, I hope, to satisfy my reader that my views have been collected from an impartial consideration of scientific history.

[25] Dublin Review, No. ix. July, 1838, p. 72.

With regard to Galileo, I do not think it can be denied that he obtruded his opinions upon the ecclesiastical authorities in an unnecessary and imprudent manner. He was of an ardent character, strongly convinced himself, and urged on still more by the conviction which he produced among his disciples, and [313] thus he became impatient for the triumph of truth. This judgment of him has recently been delivered by various independent authorities, and has undoubtedly considerable foundation[26]. As to the question whether authority in matters of natural science were habitually claimed by the authorities of the Church of Rome, I have to allow that I cannot produce instances which establish such a habit. We, who have been accustomed to have daily before our eyes the Monition which the Romish editors of Newton thought it necessary to prefix—Cæterum latis a summo Pontifice contra telluris motum Decretis, nos obsequi profitemur—were not likely to conjecture that this was a solitary instance of the interposition of the Papal authority on such subjects. But although it would be easy to find declarations of heresy delivered by Romish Universities, and writers of great authority, against tenets belonging to the natural sciences, I am not aware that any other case can be adduced in which the Church or the Pope can be shown to have pronounced such a sentence. I am well contented to acknowledge this; for I should be far more gratified by finding myself compelled to hold up the seventeenth century as a model for the nineteenth in this respect, than by having to sow enmity between the admirers of the past and the present through any disparaging contrast[27].

[26] Besides the Dublin Review, I may quote the Edinburgh Review, which I suppose will not be thought likely to have a bias in favour of the exercise of ecclesiastical authority in matters of science; though certainly there is a puerility in the critic’s phraseology which does not add to the weight of his judgment. ‘Galileo contrived to surround the truth with every variety of obstruction. The tide of knowledge, which had hitherto advanced in peace, he crested with angry breakers, and he involved in its surf both his friends and his foes.’—Ed. Rev. No. cxxiii. p. 126.

[27] I may add that the most candid of the adherents of the Church of Rome condemn the assumption of authority in matters of science, made, in this one instance at least, by the ecclesiastical tribunals. The author of the Ages of Faith (book viii. p. 248), says, ‘A Congregation, it is to be lamented, declared the new system to be opposed to Scripture, and therefore heretical.’

[314] With respect to the attempt made in my History to characterize the intellectual habits of Italy as produced by her religious condition,—certainly it would ill become any student of the history of science to speak slightingly of that country, always the mother of sciences, always ready to catch the dawn and hail the rising of any new light of knowledge. But I think our admiration of this activity and acuteness of mind is by no means inconsistent with the opinion, that new truths were promulgated more boldly beyond the Alps, and that the subtilty of the Italian intellect loved to insinuate what the rough German bluntly asserted. Of the decent duplicity with which forbidden opinions were handled, the reviewer himself gives us instances, when he boasts of the liberality with which Copernican professors were placed in important stations by the ecclesiastical authorities, soon after the doctrine of the motion of the earth had been declared by the same authorities to be contrary to Scripture. And in the same spirit is the process of demanding from Galileo a public and official recantation of opinions which he had repeatedly been told by his ecclesiastical superiors he might hold as much as he pleased. I think it is easy to believe that among persons so little careful to reconcile public profession with private conviction, official decorum was all that was demanded. When Galileo had made his renunciation of the earth’s motion on his knees, he rose and said, as we are told, E pur si muove—‘and yet it does move.’ This is sometimes represented as the heroic soliloquy of a mind cherishing its conviction of the truth, in spite of persecution; I think we may more naturally conceive it uttered as a playful epigram in the ear of a cardinal’s secretary, with a full knowledge that it would be immediately repeated to his master[28].

[28] I have somewhat further discussed the case of Galileo in the later editions of the History, book v. chap. iii. sect. 4.

Besides the Ideas involved in the material sciences, [315] of which we have already examined the principal ones, there is one Idea or Conception which our Sciences do not indeed include, but to which they not obscurely point; and the importance of this Idea will make it proper to speak of it, though this must be done very briefly.