Nisbet: Galileo Was "A Denier"

You may not know the name Robert Nisbet. But he's a prophet and, by the way, writes accurate history.

Nisbet, a sociologist by training and historian by temperament – but no Catholic, or even much of a believer – warned of such abuses in an essay debunking the Enlightenment myth that the Catholic Church brutally oppressed Galileo. Our own time, Nisbet insisted, has seen much worse:

Probably more scientists have been adversely affected – estopped altogether from a given line of research, guided, shaped, propelled, decelerated, forced into nonpublication, secrecy, turned down for funds or promotion, and barred from access to laboratory space or archives – because of defiance of conventional wisdom in America since World War II . . . than existed in the whole of the world in Galileo's day.

Early on, Nisbet adds, Galileo told his friend Kepler that he was censoring himself for "fear not of ecclesiastical but of scientific-scholarly opinion." As Galileo's views became known, the first public protests arose from "jealous and apprehensive university professors," not from clerical quarters. When Galileo's friend Pope Urban VIII reluctantly allowed a trial by the Inquisition (headed by another Galileo supporter), the great man's nemesis was no churchman but a fellow scientist.

Most important for our purposes is Galileo's fate after his enemies forced the Inquisition to find him "guilty" of Copernican teachings. Though made to take a pro forma oath of recantation, he was not imprisoned. Instead, he was given "house arrest" at his wealthy patron's estate where he had long conducted most of his research. He lived for years, and far from being daunted or suppressed, he produced some of his most important writings, "was in constant communication with the leading scientific lights of Italy and all Europe," and had "as many students as he wished" to assist him and continue his work after his death.

Irony is rich, indeed!

HT: Catholic Thing