The Galileo Problem: Science and Statecraft

Macroeconomist Philip Pilkington examines the problem of making statecraft and legal judgements depend on a “science” which by its very nature is contingent rather than settled.

The question of science and statecraft seems, at first glance, to be a modern one. Utopian methods to apply the scientific method – or at least something resembling it – appear, like so much else, to have emerged in the wake of the Enlightenment. The example that is often given is that of August Comte, who wanted to replace the old religion with his newly invented scientistic religion. Extreme as Comte may appear in retrospect, the sentiment that drove him can be found in almost all the ‘modern’ social thinkers – from Bentham to Marx and beyond.

While it is true that the modern era opened the way for much more extensive – one might be forgiven for using the term ‘totalitarian’ – ideas about applying materialistic science to human society, it is misleading to think that these tendencies did not exist prior to the Enlightenment. This is related to our tendency to associate these ideas only with attempts to create social utopias. Both before and after materialist scientific have been applied to try to create utopias, the influence of material science and proto-science on statecraft has a long and important history.

Early Science and Statecraft

The earliest instances of this were the court astrologers. Astrology has always been based on and a supplement to materialist science. The earliest materialist science was, of course, astronomy – and astrology is its brother. Long before classical thinkers laid down impressive theories, curious men watched the flight of birds and position of stars. These were what scientists might call today collections of empirical data. This data was then used by these curious men to make predictions about the future – based on when a certain star appeared or on a specific pattern in a flock of flying birds.

When the systematic thinkers approached these topics, they did so in much the same way. Ptolemy laid out his famous geocentric model of the universe in his Almagest, a book that is in many ways the foundation for modern science itself. The companion to the Almagest was the Tetrabiblos – a four book guide to astrology – and the author viewed his astrological thesis as no less scientific than his astronomical thesis.

Ptolemy’s reasoning is solid. He tells his readers that it is obvious that the celestial bodies have an impact on earthly bodies. After all, when the sun is out, we feel its warmth; and the position of the moon predicts the tides in an almost magical way. It is therefore reasonable to infer that this holds for heavenly bodies in general. Ptolemy argues that due to the nature of the field, astrology is more open to error than his simple astronomical models – but this is only because there isso much more data, observation and interpretation is needed for astrological projections.

Astrology, Ptolemy argues, is what we might today call a highly ‘complex system’ and so any errors in forecasting the system can be explained by its complexity. Ptolemy’s arguments sound familiar to anyone au fait with contemporary scientific materialist prediction – and the excuses given when they fail.

How were the early court astrologers treated by statesmen? Many were elevated and listened to. Astrology was a central feature of Greek and Roman culture. Activities that tended to have uncertain outcomes – such as launching a new business venture – were often done in consultation with an astrologer. Statesmen were highly reliant on astrology, not just to decide when to undertake certain actions, but also to explain events to the public and thereby manipulate public opinion. An early example of this was when Octavius claimed that a comet that appeared in the sky at the time of the assassination of Julius Caesar was the dictator’s soul ascending to divine status. This proclamation helped pave the way for Octavius’ reign as first Roman Empire under the title Augustus. Again, this reminds us of the use of certain materialist scientific ideas today by leaders who want to justify their power and their decisions.

There was, however, a faction of the educated elite who scorned astrology. We should emphasise that the elite who criticised astrology were outliers and mavericks. Their attitudes were typically based on an extreme scepticism or puritanism in their philosophical ideals and were in no way representative of their class or of broader educated opinion. The Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus devoted one of his books to the topic, entitled Against the Astrologers (Pros Astrologous). More famously, Cicero wrote a dialogue against astrology entitled Concerning Divination (De Devinatione). Both tracts viewed the results of astrological inquiry as being essentially superstition. Cicero closes his dialogue with the following:

For superstition is ever at your heels to urge you on; it follows you at every turn. It is with you when you listen to a prophet, or an omen; when you offer sacrifices or watch the flight of birds; when you consult an astrologer or a soothsayer; when it thunders or lightens or there is a bolt from on high; or when some so‑called prodigy is born or is made. And since necessarily some of these signs are nearly always being given, no one who believes in them can ever remain in a tranquil state of mind.(Cicero, Book II, ¶149).

The Church would eventually arrive at the same conclusion. But the Church would take the nature of divination more seriously than the ever-sceptical Sextus Empircus and Cicero. The Church came to view astrological divination as a violation of the First Commandment. The Cathechism states that, while God can reveal the future to his prophets and saints, any form of divination that actively seeks power of the future is demonic.

All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone. (Catechism of the Catholic Church Second Edition, ¶2116).

The Galileo Problem

It would be neat and tidy to wrap up our discussion of astrology and divination and state that we are next going to deal with the scientific period proper. Doing so would imply that some sort of epistemic break had occurred at some point in history where we overcame the superstitions of astrology and entered the truths of science. But this would be misleading. Astrology was never magic. It was a materialistic proto-science based on the solid foundations of classical astronomy. It may have been based on false premises, but those premises were rational and certainly not obviously false. In reality, there was not and has never been some grand epistemic break.

The emergent scientific era, however, did confront the authorities with new and interesting problems. The most famous instance of this was the case of Galileo. Much mythology has sprung up around Galileo. He has been championed as a sort of secular martyr. This was a quite conscious propaganda effort by certain Enlightenment thinkers to try to undermine the authority of the Church. We will not engage with this mythology beyond noting that it exists and has exerted an enormous amount of influence.

Galileo Demonstrating the New Astronomical Theories at the University of Padua, by Félix Parra, 1873

Galileo famously picked an argument with the Church over heliocentrism. The Church at the time still adhered to a geocentric model of the universe. It is often said that this is because the model resembled the account given in the Old Testament. This argument has been overplayed. As early as Augustine, creation passages in the Bible have been viewed as largely analogical, with Augustine famously arguing that the six days of creation are a metaphor to convey a process that is beyond human comprehension. The Church defended the geocentric view of the universe mainly because it was the commonly held view at the time. The fact that it did seem to lend credence to a more literal reading of certain passages in the Old Testament is secondary, as shown by the fact that the Church had no problem digesting the heliocentric view when the evidence became overwhelming.

The issue was not so much that Galileo disagreed with the accepted model. Rather it was that he disagreed so vehemently. After all, Galileo was promoting the view of Nicolas Copernicus which had been published 50 years before. Copernicus was a Catholic canon who never ran into problems with the Church authorities. But after his death some philosophers attacked his work. Debates on the Copernican doctrine started to generate heat around the time of Galileo’s intervention. Galileo entered the fray as a pugilist – something that seemed ingrained in his personality. Since the Reformation was under way at the time, the Church authorities were especially sensitive to this type of rhetoric and watchful of those who espoused it in case it might develop into a strain of Protestantism.

Nevertheless, by the time the Inquisition were investigating Galileo, the latter had succeeded in creating a truly scientific scandal. Through his aggressive interventions, Galileo had forced the Inquisition’s hand to treat the Copernican theory – which had been ignored and tolerated for 50 years – as a potential heresy. The Inquisition was perfectly well-equipped to judge heresies. They had the theological resources to do so. But Copernicus’ theory was not a theological doctrine. Rather it was a scientific hypothesis. From the beginning, there was no reason to think that the Inquisition, set up to identify theological error and heresy, was an institution that could determine whether a scientific hypothesis was true or false. But the politics of the time, together with Galileo’s brash personality, forced them into this impossible position.

The Inquisition did the best job they could of it. They called experts who opposed Galileo and asked them why the Copernican theory was wrong. Galileo’s arguments rested on data that he had gathered through his newly built telescope. Those opposing Galileo pointed out that there was no reason to believe that his telescope was an accurate measuring device. Galileo countered that he had tested it on terrestrial objects and then compared what he saw through the telescope with what he saw when he approached the objects. His interlocutors objected to this, saying that viewing a building two miles away was a very different enterprise than turning the instrument on the distant stars.

Ultimately, Galileo’s critics won the day. But they won it on scientific grounds. Galileo’s evidence was, indeed, thin. The philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend devoted a good portion of his famous book Against Method to the Galileo case. His conclusion is damning:

The Church at the time of Galileo not only kept closer to reason as defined then and, in part, even now; it also considered the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s views. Its indictment of Galileo was rational and only opportunism and a lack of perspective can demand a revision. (Feyerabend 1975, p125).

Galileo’s arguments seemed to be motivated more by a desire for troublemaking and a truculence of character than by any genuinely new discovery that he had made. The Inquisition recognised this by judging that, not only was Galileo wrong from a scientific point of view, but he also was engaged in ‘formal heresy’ – that is, heresy that is conscious, flamboyant, and self-aware. Considering all this, the Inquisition treated Galileo quite gently. Once again, this indicates that the Church felt that they had been forced into the inquest by circumstance.

How then would we define the Galileo Problem? We would define it as such: The Galileo Problem exists when an institution that is set up to determine theological truth, or an institution whose main prerogative is statecraft or jurisprudence, is forced to decide on the truth or falsity of a scientific question.

The Galileo Problem is a recipe for disaster. We will explore this more in what follows. Here we will merely recall what happened after the Inquisition judged against Galileo. In very short order, he became a secular martyr and was put on a pedestal by those who wanted to attack the Church. Today the cult of Galileo has reached absurd heights, with physicist Stephen Hawking declaring that this fairly mediocre thinker, who lived in the shadow of the much greater Copernicus, bears the most responsibility for the birth of modern science itself (Hawking 1988, p179). Many of these laureates are in part motivated by religious hatred – Hawking himself is famously an aggressive atheist – but Galileo has remained a thorn in the side of the Church, implicitly associating the latter with anti-scientific irrationalism and barbarism.

The Church had to retreat from its position on Galileo as the evidence for heliocentrism became overwhelming. This started in 1718 when Galileo’s other works were allowed to be published and concluded in 1741 when Galileo’s heliocentric works, lightly edited, were permitted for publication. Even from the singular case of Galileo we can see how pernicious the Galileo Problem can be for those who decide to parry with it. Even if an institution engages in good faith with a scientific idea and follows the evidence where it leads, this evidence is always subject to change. This is simply the nature of science. There is no such thing as ‘settled science’. What is settled today may be unsettled tomorrow and then unsettled again the next day. Foolish is the man who builds his house on sand; and foolish is the purveyor of timeless truths who risks their reputation on a contingent scientific question.