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Galileo Galilei:
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615
To the Most Serene Grand Duchess Mother:
Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the
heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty
of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in
contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic
philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors-as if I
had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset
nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of
known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the
arts; not their diminution or destruction.
Showing a greater fondness for their own opinions than for truth they sought
to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for
themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them. To this end
they hurled various charges and published numerous writings filled with vain
arguments, and they made the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages
taken from places in the Bible which they had failed to understand properly,
and which were ill-suited to their purposes...
First they have endeavored to spread the opinion that such propositions
[1] in general are contrary to the Bible and are
consequently damnable and heretical. They know that it is human nature to
take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how
unjustly, rather than those from which a man may receive some just
encouragement. Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would
preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from their very
pulpits with unwonted confidence, thus doing impious and inconsiderate
injury not only to that doctrine and its followers but to all mathematics
and mathematicians in general. Next, becoming bolder, and hoping (though
vainly) that this seed which first took root in their hypocritical minds
would send out branches and ascend to heaven, they began scattering rumors
among the people that before long this doctrine would be condemned by the
supreme authority. They know, too, that official condemnation would not only
suppress the two propositions which I have mentioned, but would render
damnable all other astronomical and physical statements and observations
that have any necessary relation or connection with these.
The reason produced for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and
the sun stands still in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun
moves and the earth stands still. Since the Bible cannot err; it follows as
a necessary consequence that anyone takes a erroneous and heretical position
who maintains that the sun is inherently motionless and the earth movable.
With regard to this argument, I think in the first place that it is very
pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak
untruth-whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will
deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite
different from what its bare words signify. Hence in expounding the Bible if
one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one
might fall into error. Not only contradictions and propositions far from
true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and
follies. Thus it would be necessary to assign to God feet, hands and eyes,
as well as corporeal and human affections, such as anger, repentance,
hatred, and sometimes even the forgetting of` things past and ignorance of
those to come. These propositions uttered by the Holy Ghost were set down in
that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the
capacities of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. For the sake
of those who deserve to be separated from the herd, it is necessary that
wise expositors should produce the true senses of such passages, together
with the special reasons for which they were set down in these words. This
doctrine is so widespread and so definite with all theologians that it would
be superfluous to adduce evidence for it.
Hence I think that I may reasonably conclude that whenever the Bible has
occasion to speak of any physical conclusion (especially those which are
very abstruse and hard to understand), the rule has been observed of
avoiding confusion in the minds of the common people which would render them
contumacious toward the higher mysteries. Now the Bible, merely to
condescend to popular capacity, has not hesitated to obscure some very
important pronouncements, attributing to God himself some qualities
extremely remote from (and even contrary to) His essence. Who, then, would
positively declare that this principle has been set aside, and the Bible has
confined itself rigorously to the bare and restricted sense of its words,
when speaking but casually of the earth, of water, of the sun, or of any
other created thing? Especially in view of the fact that these things in no
way concern the primary purpose of the sacred writings, which is the service
of God and the salvation of souls - matters infinitely beyond the
comprehension of the common people.
This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we
ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from
senseexperiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the
phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the
dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's
commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the
understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from
the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But
Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never
transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse
reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason
it appears that nothing physical which senseexperience sets before our
eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in
question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which
may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not
chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern
all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature's
actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible. Perhaps this is what
Tertullian meant by these words:
"We conclude that God is known first through Nature, and then again, more
particularly, by doctrine, by Nature in His works, and by doctrine in His
revealed word."
From this I do not mean to infer that we need not have an extraordinary
esteem for the passages of holy Scripture. On the contrary, having arrived
at any certainties in physics, we ought to utilize these as the most
appropriate aids in the true exposition of the Bible and in the
investigation of those meanings which are necessarily contained therein, for
these must be concordant with demonstrated truths. I should judge that the
authority of the Bible was designed to persuade men of those articles and
propositions which, surpassing all human reasoning could not be made
credible by science, or by
any other means than through the very mouth of the Holy Spirit.
Yet even in those propositions which are not matters of faith, this
authority ought to be preferred over that of all human writings which are
supported only by bare assertions or probable arguments, and not set forth
in a demonstrative way. This I hold to be necessary and proper to the same
extent that divine wisdom surpasses all human judgment and conjecture.
But I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by
some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would
not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set
before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations.
1. Galileo is referring here to the heliocentric
model of the universe proposed by Nicholas Copernicus
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