Galileo and Darwin

Galileo and Darwin

Introduction

The history of the science-religion debate is often told by means of two famous test cases: the Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and his interaction with the Roman Catholic Church, and the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882), whose ideas led to controversies with various (mainly Protestant) theologians. Two cases do not make a history, and John Brooke's work has shown how diverse and particular are the interactions of different sciences with different patterns of religious thought. However, the two cases are highly significant (Dowe, 2005).

Discussion

Galileo made advances in many areas of mathematics, science, and technology. He is most famous for his adoption of a sun-centred model of the solar system at a time when the church taught that the Earth was the centre of the universe. His defence of the sun-centred model, first developed by Copernicus (1473-1543), led ultimately to Galileo being placed under house arrest by the Catholic Church. It is important to recognize, however, that the church was not separate from science but a great sponsor of scientific exploration, and that Galileo was himself a believer and cared passionately about the interpretation of Scripture as well as about the truths of physics. Political and personal tensions played a large part in his denunciation (Dowe, 2005).

The "Galileo affair," then, was not a simple case of the church suppressing free enquiry by a devoted scientist. Galileo's significance is somewhat different. First, in retrospect religious authorities could see that prevailing theories of the cosmos might undergo gradual change and that this process was one they could not control. Second, Galileo's thought set the tone for the development of physical science from that point. He saw that science would be most effective if it concentrated on measurable quantities and reproducible effects; he also saw that observations of a ball ...