>>Thank you for joining me in the History of Science Collections of the University of
Oklahoma Libraries. Let's look at a few treasures from the vault that throw a little light on
the story of science and religion in the case of Galileo. The controversies over Galileo
offer a paradigm example of how difficult it can be to promote interdisciplinary collaboration
when emerging research fronts require novel methodologies. In Galileo's case, practitioners
of the established fields of both theology and physics were not ready to welcome Galileo's
mathematical methods or to relinquish their own traditional methods.
In 1615, in response to gathering criticism, Galileo had written a short reconciliation
of Scripture and Copernicanism in a letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. In the Letter
to Christina, Galileo argued that the purpose of Scripture is to tell us how to go to heaven,
not how the heavens go; Scripture never errs, but its interpreters do err; and read rightly,
Scripture and Science will never conflict for there is a unity of truth. That which
is obscure, such as figurative language, should be explained by that which is clear, such
as mathematical demonstrations. This is the first printed edition of Galileo's Letter
to the Grand Duchess Christina, which appeared in 1636. Consider the wording of Psalm chapter
78 and verse 65 in this first edition of the King James Bible: "Then the Lord awaked as
one out of sleep and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine." Now does this
mean God is really being portrayed as a literally drunken man? Of course not, biblical language
is accommodated to common idiom and sensory perception, and not intended to teach us the
invisible natures of things. To show the traditional basis of his approach, Galileo cited St. Augustine
throughout the Letter to the Grand Duchess. Augustine taught that the language of Scripture
was accommodated to the understanding of ordinary readers and therefore not intended to impart
theoretical knowledge in natural science. Thomas Aquinas agreed, writing in his Summa
that "Moses was speaking to ignorant people and out of condescension to their simpleness
presented to them only those things that are immediately obvious to the senses."
In theory, nothing would have prevented Roman Catholic theologians at the time from following
the advice of Augustine and Aquinas and accepting the Copernican system, had they rigorously
followed their own explicitly formulated principles of interpreting Scripture. Copernicus himself
was Catholic and dedicated the De revolutionibus to Pope Paul III. More recently, Pope John
Paul II deliberately used Galilean language to affirm similar hermeneutical principles
in 1992. So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the first defense of Copernicus in Spain
was written by a theologian, Diego de Zuniga, in a commentary on the book of Job. His commentary
on Job shows that Zuniga possessed a working knowledge of Copernicus's astronomy, including
some of its technicalities. Other theologians came to Copernicus's defense as well, but
after the Council of Trent, their efforts were looked upon with suspicion, as the Church
sought to minimize novelties which, to the minds of the Council, were linked to the Reformation.
After Trent, theologians did not pause to consider the potential reach of the new mathematical
methodologies. Johann Kepler wrote an essay reconciling Copernicanism and Scripture, along
similar lines as Galileo's letter to Christina. It was published along with Galileo's letter
in this volume, the first English translation of any of Galileo's works.
The controversy over the comets illustrates that the Galileo Affair, however tragic, was
not inevitable. When three comets appeared in 1618, Oratio Grassi occupied the chair
of mathematics at the Collegio Romano, the leading university run by the Jesuits in Rome.
The Jesuits were charged with teaching nothing contrary to Thomas Aquinas in theology, and
nothing contrary to Aristotle in natural science. Aristotle, in his Meteorology, taught that
comets are vapors that occur beneath the Moon. Yet in this work, Grassi, a skilled astronomer,
accurately determined the trajectory of the comets and proved that they moved through
the heavens beyond the Moon. Did he get into trouble? Ironically, he met resistance indeed,
but not from his own order. Rather, the pushback came from none other than Galileo himself.
In this book, Galileo's own copy of Il Saggiatore, Galileo assailed Grassi for not understanding
that the location of a comet is an optical illusion! It seems Galileo was particularly
upset with Grassi for not defending Copernicus in his treatise on the comets, yet Galileo's
fallacious argument, clothed in satire toward Grassi, marked an unfortunate rift between
Galileo and the mathematically trained Jesuits. Nevertheless, Galileo dedicated this book
to the pope, who received it delightedly.
This beautiful illustrated manuscript consists of Grassi's lecture notes at the Collegio
Romano in the very year Galileo published Il Saggiatore. Documentary sources for astronomy
at the Collegio Romano are notably scarce; this manuscript is one of only a few astronomical
manuscripts from the leading Jesuit university preceding the publication and subsequent condemnation
of Galileo's Dialog. So what was Grassi actually teaching behind closed doors in the Jesuit
university? It turns out that this manuscript shows that not only was Grassi teaching that
comets move beyond the Moon, contrary to Aristotle, but he also discusses Gaileo's discoveries
with the telescope, including imperfections on the surface of the Sun and Moon and the
satellites of Jupiter. This manuscript is new to scholars and never before published.
It was acquired with assistance from the OU Athletic Department in 2013. Go Sooners!
The case of Grassi and the Jesuits in the controversy of the comets show that a mind-numbing
adherence to Aristotle's Earth-centered cosmology was not inevitable in the Catholic Church.
In this massive work (bound in two volumes), Riccioli offered his fellow Jesuit astronomers
a thorough-going reformation of astronomy. With Ptolemy almost dead and buried, the Jesuits
needed a new astronomy, a new Almagest, which Riccioli offered at mid-century. The frontispiece
of Riccioli's new Almagest depicts not two, but three major systems of the world. The
Ptolemaic system rests discarded in the lower right corner. It could be rejected but not
forgotten. While all-seeing Argus looks on, Urania weighs in a balance the two chief world
systems of the world which remain: Riccioli's system — a variant of Tycho Brahe's — and
the system of Copernicus. The Copernican appears as the standard against which alternatives
must be measured. As this episode suggests, some of Galileo's strongest supporters were
Jesuit mathematicians in the Church, who were leading astronomers. Some of Galileo's strongest
opponents were physicists in the universities, who, like the post-Trent theologians, were
unwilling to recognize the power of the new mathematical methods. Instead of a conflict
thesis, where we expect conflict to arise inevitably, we need a complexity thesis that
interprets historical events as drama, as a story that might have turned out otherwise.
Science is a story. We have not even scratched the surface of the Galileo Affair. What stories
do you want to hear and tell about Galileo?