You might have heard of... Galileo Galilei

WHO WERE THEY?

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642 AD)

WHAT DID HE DO?

Galileo was one of those guys who could turn his hand to most things - a ‘polymath’; he has been called the father of science, modern physics, astronomy and the scientific method. Galileo got into deep water with the Roman Church when, in 1633, they deemed him a heretic for his observations that it was the Earth that rotated round the Sun (the Copernican model) and not the other way around. The Roman Church, at that time, saw this as being against the teaching of Scripture. He was imprisoned until he recanted and his publications (the distribution of which was made possible by the Gutenberg press) were forbidden. He maintained his belief privately until his death.

WHAT DIFFERENCE HAS IT MADE?

Galileo laid the foundations for the modern approach to science by thinking of the laws of nature in purely mathematical terms and by carrying out experiments to see the effects of variables rather than simply taking the word of the ‘authorities’ (at that stage, the Roman Church). Without his work, we wouldn’t have, for example, Newton’s laws of motion and gravity. However, perhaps the most profound knock-on effects of Galileo are in the way he changed the relationship between science and religion. It turned out that Galileo and Copernicus were right about the Earth spinning around the Sun and ‘Science’ still resents the intervention of ‘the Church’ and harks back to the persecution of ‘their champion’. Today, we still feel the effects of the divorce of science and religion that began some 500 years ago. Atheists often propound ‘Science’ as the reason for their atheism. However, the pendulum often swings both ways, with ‘the Church’ seeming to abandon science as a lost cause and an intimidating foreign threat. We have seen the resurrection of the old philosophies, both in religious and secular thought, which separate the physical and spiritual realms (dualism), emphasizing the pre-eminence of one over the other.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Is there a final conflict between science and religion as so many claim there is? Where does ‘doing science’ fit into the Christian vocation? Do we think that the physical or the spiritual is all that really matters? Or do we truly value both as equally created by God? Do we treat others with the respect due to image-bearers of God, even when we disagree with them? Are we willing to examine the reasons for own beliefs and humbly admit when they are inadequate?