The case of Galileo

The case of Galileo is one of the most widespread modern historical myths, widely used by anti-Catholic propaganda, along with the anti-Spanish Black Legend. It surfaces even in the most unexpected places. For example, in the book A Song for Nagasaki, an excellent biography of Takashi Nagai, scientist, convert, and atomic bomb survivor, whose beatification process is underway, his biographer Paul Glynn, an Australian Catholic priest, states twice that Nagai's conversion was delayed due to his concern about the atrocities committed by Catholics throughout history, and cites four: a) the Crusades; b) the Inquisition; c) the genocide of native Americans in South America; and d) the case of Galileo. It is curious that Nagai says nothing about this in his autobiography, and it is surprising that a Catholic priest would fall for such historical fallacies.

The case of the Crusades is too complex to explain here. About the alleged atrocities of the Inquisition, which for English speakers usually means the Spanish Inquisition (although it existed in most European countries), they forget that the English Inquisition is even older, and that the English government, during the last decades of the 15th century, pressured the Pope to force Castille and Aragon (the two kingdoms that made Spain later) to install the Inquisition. They also forget the English treatment of Catholic priests by the Tudor, which was worse than the procedures used by the Spanish Inquisition against Jewish and Muslim converts who kept in secret their former devotions.

As for the genocide of Native Americans in South America, let's look at the current figures:

1.      Indigenous population in English-speaking America: 11.5 million (3% of the total).

2.      Mixed-race (European-Indigenous) population in English-speaking America: 4.6 million (1.2%).

3.      Indigenous population in Spanish-speaking America: between 45 and 58 million (8% to 10% of the total).

4.      Mixed-race (European-Indigenous) population in Spanish-speaking America: 310 million people (47% of the population).

More than 55% of the current population of Latin America is indigenous or of mixed ancestry. In English-speaking America, they do not reach 5%. Where is the genocide? It is true that many Native Americans died after the Spanish conquest, but most died from diseases against which they had no immunity, which is not genocide.

Galileo Galilei

Finally, the case of Galileo. Many English speakers have believed the myth that Galileo was condemned to death and executed by the Inquisition. The truth is he was sentenced to house arrest.

With his telescope, Galileo made several very important discoveries, including: a) The lunar craters. b) Sunspots and the sun's rotation (at the same time as other astronomers). c) The phases of Venus. d) Jupiter's four largest moons. e) Saturn's rings. All of these were observational discoveries. But when it came to formulating astronomical theories, he hit a brick wall.

·         Galileo asserted correctly that the Earth revolves around the sun, as the Copernican theory stated. At that time, the alternative theory to Copernicus's was not Ptolemy's, which had already been discarded, but Tycho Brahe's, which held that the sun revolves around the Earth and the other planets around the sun. In Galileo's time, science was not yet able to distinguish between these two theories. In trying to prove the Copernican theory, Galileo resorted to the tides. Since the tides follow a cycle equal to half the cycle of the moon's apparent daily orbit around the Earth, most astronomers correctly believed that the moon was the cause of the tides. Galileo opposed this theory, incorrectly arguing that the tides were oscillations of seawater caused by the Earth's rotation around the sun. This was the argument he presented in his book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which triggered his trial by the Inquisition and was based on an incorrect scientific theory.

·         To explain the miracle of the sun standing still in the Book of Joshua, Galileo held the erroneous theory that the sun's rotation on its axis causes the rotation of all the planets. Therefore, if the sun's rotation stopped, the Earth's rotation would instantly stop, and thus the sun would appear stationary. Galileo explains this in his letter to Christina of Lorraine. As in the previous case, this theory of Galileo is based on a scientifically incorrect assumption.

Aside from his astronomical observations, Galileo's greatest scientific achievement in the theoretical field was his contribution to the physics of motion, which he presented in his book Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla meccanica & i movimenti locali, written during the house arrest to which he was sentenced as a result of his trial before the Inquisition.

Many more details, along with original documents, can be found in the book by Ignacio Sols El proceso a Galileo a través de sus textos.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca