Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
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
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Galileo!
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 who takes issue with the notion of evolution. They've manufactured the idea a controversy over evolution, when no such controversy exists.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
That should pretty much even things out for you.
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.
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.
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
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
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.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
True.
And the universe in Animal Farm was fictional, and therefore had nothing of value to say.
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.
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.
/. 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.
You must be new here. Everyone who ever posts on
There, I said it. Now do me!
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
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.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
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.