The Forbidden Universe: The Origins of Science and the Search for the Mind of God

by Lynn Picknett

  While most educated people today still think that Galileo’s trial was all about a clash between the scientific and religious mindsets, historians have long realized that this is way off the mark. It has therefore become fashionable to see the affair as a collision between two great and obstinate egos, two pathologically ‘right men’: Galileo, who refused to be told what he could do or say, and Pope Urban VIII, whose ego had been bruised by Galileo putting his views in the mouth of a character offensively named Simplicio. The prevalent view is that if only Galileo had not been so stubborn, and had made it clear that he was presenting heliocentricity simply as a hypothesis, then all of his trauma could have been avoided. The very fact that the myth of the clash of egos has endured is an acknowledgement that something is still missing. It seems that the elusive ‘something’ may have been a factor that neither side wanted to see the light of day …

  On the question of Galileo’s attitude to Hermeticism, ironically other historians argue that he would have nothing to do with it because he was too staunch and conventional a Christian. Particularly after the way he was portrayed in Dan Brown’s thriller Angels and Demons (2000) there was a rush to paint him as an especially devout Catholic, respectful of the Church. But there is little evidence for this. Galileo’s published works deal with matters of science, not religion, and his surviving personal letters contain very little on religious matters. Naturally he used the conventional Christian platitudes of the time, and observed the outward trappings – going to church, taking communion and so on – as everybody was compelled to do in that time and place; but no more than this.

  In his published works, Galileo explicitly distanced himself from certain of the esoteric arts (most specifically numerology derived from Pythagoras), which is taken by today’s commentators to indicate his modernity and rationalism. However, given what had happened to Bruno, this could equally have been simply an act of self-preservation: one specialist, Giorgio de Santillana, specifically links the disavowal of numerology to Galileo distancing himself from Bruno and his ilk.10 And in any case, dismissing one arcane system does not necessarily mean dismissing everything esoteric. And yet on the other hand, Galileo practised astrology. It is often stated in popular histories that, although he drew up horoscopes for wealthy clients, he only did this for the money, and never actually believed in it. In fact, there’s no evidence at all that this was his attitude – it is yet another example of modern projection.

  Galileo was undoubtedly a brilliant pioneering scientist who used observation and experiment to work out the laws governing physical phenomena and sought to explain them in mathematical terms. The methods he developed would inspire and shape the next generation and culminate in the genius of Isaac Newton. Both Einstein and Stephen Hawking have hailed Galileo as the father of modern science, and he has been described as ‘the world’s first celebrity scientist’11 – the Einstein of his day. But there are many ironies in his story and the way it has passed into history, or perhaps more precisely, legend.

  The first irony is that what Galileo is best known for now – helping to establish the heliocentric theory – is actually one of the least important aspects of his work. His major contributions to science were in what we today would call the field of physics: motion, optics, acoustics and so on. In astronomy, his big innovation was to improve the telescope to the point that it was good enough for astronomical observations (although he originally thought in terms of military and maritime applications). And while the observations Galileo made with the telescope produced new evidence in favour of Copernicus, the arguments he thought proved the theory were, in fact, entirely mistaken. Galileo thought that the smoking gun was the phenomenon of the tides, arguing their ebb and flow could only be explained by the Earth’s rotation, airily dismissing Kepler’s suggestion that they were caused by the pull of the Moon. In this, Galileo was, of course, completely wrong.

  In fact, his whole attitude to heliocentricity was at odds with the methodical and meticulously worked-out approach that characterized the rest of his work and which rightly justifies his status as the founding father of the modern scientific method. Einstein thought Galileo was so determined to prove Copernicus right that he was blind to the obvious problems with his argument.12 As the Danish science historian Olaf Pedersen, speaking at a conference on the Galileo affair in Cracow in 1984, observed:

  In consequence [of his acceptance of the theory] it became imperative to find convincing reasons for its being true in a physical sense, as Galileo tried to do with his somewhat unsatisfactory theory of the tides … 13

  In other words, Galileo became convinced by the theory and then set out to find evidence for it – hardly a true scientific approach. He enjoyed his celebrity status and the material benefits it brought. He had a flair for self-publicity, never being one to hide his innovations and discoveries, if anything exaggerating them. But he seems to have made it his mission in life to see the theory of heliocentricity proved, while being uncharacteristically circumspect about his support for it. Although writing to Kepler as early as 1597 that he had ‘become convinced by Copernicus many years ago’,14 publicly he was keen to be seen as much more equivocal, even evasive.

  Of course, Bruno’s fate must always have been at the forefront of his mind, and must have acted as a hideous, cautionary tale. Advocating the motion of the Earth had certainly contributed to his condemnation as a heretic, and Galileo, along with other scholars in Catholic lands, may well have considered it prudent not to whip up any hype. But despite this, there is evidence of a more solid connection between Galileo and Bruno and the Giordanisti – including evidence that Galileo owed an intellectual debt to Bruno. And there is no doubt whatsoever that Galileo was fully aware of the significance that the Hermeticists read into heliocentricity.

  Galileo was a lifelong friend of Campanella. One of his staunchest supporters during the controversy, Campanella composed the Defence of Galileo from his prison cell in 1622. And ten years later, by then a free man living in Rome under the protection of the Pope himself, he was still corresponding with Galileo during the latter’s most difficult time, urging him to stand firm because of the spiritual importance of his work. Yates remarks when discussing Defence of Galileo:

  Campanella is being careful to dissociate himself from the full implications of Bruno’s Copernicanism. This was all the more necessary since, both in the apology and in letters to Galileo, Campanella speaks of heliocentricity as a return to ancient truth and as portending a new age, using language strongly reminiscent of Bruno in the Cena de le ceneri [The Ash Wednesday Supper] … And in other letters he assures Galileo that he is constructing a new theology which will vindicate him. It has therefore to be made clear that heliocentricity as a portent of a new age, and as integrated into a new theology did not mean for Campanella at this stage in his career, acceptance of all Bruno’s heresies.15

  So Galileo was not only in contact with Hermeticists, but was also very aware of just how important they considered his work. But could the connection go much deeper? Was there a more mystical dimension to the whole affair?

  Galileo was familiar with Bruno’s writings. In the 1590s, when he first focused on heliocentricity, there was no problem with being a fan of the Neapolitan – just as after 1600 there were excellent reasons not to be seen to be. After the publication of Galileo’s first book touching on the controversy, Kepler criticized him for not honestly acknowledging the intellectual debt he owed to Bruno.16 Of course it was easy for Kepler, who cited Bruno in his own work, to criticize Galileo from the safety of Bohemia.

  But Galileo’s interest in Bruno goes deeper than merely reading his books. There are close parallels between Galileo’s 1632 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems – which led to his downfall – and Bruno’s The Ash Wednesday Supper, the first of his works to advocate Copernicus and to declare that establishing heliocentricity would free the human spirit. It may not be a coincidence that this was Campanella’s favourite of Bruno’s works.<
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  Another clue suggesting Galileo’s familiarity with Bruno comes from a passage in the Dialogue where he lays the foundation for the later theory of relativity. Although the term is popularly associated with Einstein, what he formulated were his special and general theories of relativity, which are in fact highly complex developments of Galileo’s original principle (sometimes called ‘Galilean relativity’). This argues that physical phenomena can only be properly described according to the context in which they are observed – i.e., the same event can look completely different to observers in different places. This principle underpinned Newton’s laws of motion and Einstein’s own theories.

  In The Ash Wednesday Supper, published over forty years earlier, Bruno made the same point with a very similar example: if two people, one on shore and the other on the deck of a moving ship, drop a stone, each will see their own stone move through an identical path, dropping the same distance at the same speed, but they will perceive the other’s stone as moving further – not only downwards but sideways – and therefore faster, since it covers a greater distance in the same time.17 Descriptions of events therefore depend on the frame of reference.

  Having never publicly referred to the Hermetic interest in heliocentricity, why should Galileo base his masterwork on a book by someone anathematized by the Church for championing precisely that theory? Perhaps this was a covert acknowledgement of his debt to Bruno, or even a coded hint that he was aware of his own significance to the Hermetic vision.

  THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

  Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de’ Galilei’s career began in 1592 at the age of twenty-eight, when thanks to Bruno’s incarceration he became Professor of Mathematics at the University of Padua. This is where hemet Campanella and began an important and lifelong association. Another major influence at that time was Pinelli – often described as Galileo’s mentor – who introduced him to the emergent science of optics, which was to make Galileo’s reputation. Another of his dubious associates was Traiano Boccalini, author of the Bruno-inspired News from Parnassus, and a controversial friar and professor of canon law named Paolo Sarpi, who was at the forefront of the legal challenges to the Pope’s authority and the attempts to forge an alliance with James I’s England in the first decade of the seventeenth century. With friends like these, the Inquisition must surely have kept a very close eye on Galileo from the beginning.

  Galileo became convinced of the truth of the Copernican theory ‘many years’ before 1597, although precisely why he had this epiphany remains uncertain. We have also seen that he incorrectly considered the movement of the tides as the best evidence for, even the proof of, the theory. He persisted in this view even when he produced much better evidence through his pioneering use of the new cutting edge technology of the telescope, begun around 1610. His astronomical observations – that the Moon’s rugged surface is reminiscent of our own world, the existence of the moons of Jupiter and particularly Venus’ lunar-like phases – strongly supported Copernicus’ theory. Galileo realized how sensational these discoveries would appear, and cannily sought to use them as leverage to build a career. So he rushed into print before anyone could steal his thunder, premiering his first wave of discoveries in Starry Messenger (Sidereus nuncius) in 1610.

  As he had guessed, the intelligentsia became greatly excited and he landed the position he craved as court mathematician and philosopher to Cosimo II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Perhaps this wasn’t too surprising given that Galileo had been careful to dedicate the book to him and proposed calling the new moons of Jupiter the ‘Medicean stars’. Even the world’s loftiest thinkers obviously recognized the most basic principle: flattery will get you anywhere.

  It seems odd that Galileo failed to use his discoveries to bolster the Copernican theory, even though he was an ardent supporter. In both Starry Messenger and a follow-up book on his discovery of the phases of Venus, he merely presented the observations. Perhaps, as he was hoping to build a glittering new career on them, he decided that it was best to play down the Copernican implications of his discoveries.

  But the row refused to go away. Most readers with an astronomical background got the point: Galileo’s discoveries seriously undermined the traditional Ptolemaic system. But even this failed to shift the consensus to Copernicus. Hybrid systems, such as Tycho Brahe’s, where some celestial bodies orbited the sun and some the Earth, were preferred.

  From the Church’s point of view Galileo’s discoveries were already unwelcome news, and threatened worse to come. Not only was his work propelling scholars towards heliocentricity, but the telescope might lead to further discoveries that would decisively tip the balance in its favour. And now there was an added piquancy: if irrefutable proof was forthcoming, would it inspire the Hermeticists to kickstart their revolution, philosophically, theologically – even politically?

  Matters came to a head in 1615 when Galileo finally went public with his support for heliocentricity. He circulated an essay based on the biblical passages that implied the Earth did not move, including the unequivocal statement: ‘I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolution of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it.’18 This was an extraordinarily dangerous declaration that would transform Galileo’s fame into notoriety overnight.

  Pope Paul V ordered a group of cardinals to investigate the issue of heliocentricity on theological grounds, and they decided it was contrary to scripture. As a result, Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres was finally banned, along with any other pro-heliocentric works. Galileo was summoned to Rome to be warned off and put right. The sun moved round the Earth and not vice versa. It was true because the Vatican said so.

  But there was an unspoken subtext: the cardinal tasked with warning Galileo was none other than Roberto Bellarmino, the same man who had interrogated Bruno in his last months, and was responsible for his condemnation and execution. This was not a coincidence – Bellarmino had been Archbishop of Capua since 1602, but was recalled to Rome specifically to deal with Galileo. He even interviewed Galileo in the same room as he had interviewed Bruno.

  Bellarmino, of course, understood from his experience of Bruno the significance that heliocentricity possessed for the Hermetic revolution. Bruno was dead and Campanella incarcerated in Naples, but they had followers – nobody knew how many. And now here was Galileo, associated with both Campanella and Pinelli, getting dangerously close to the proof that Bruno had declared would trigger the new Hermetic age. In the end, nothing harsh was done to Galileo. He was simply given a document written by Bellarmino himself stating that the Pope had decreed that Copernicus’ views could not be ‘defended or upheld’. Galileo hastily agreed.

  Even more telling is Galileo’s immediate reaction after receiving his warning. Rather than return directly to Florence, he wanted to travel to Naples and was obliged to request permission from his patron, Duke Cosimo – but Cosimo refused. Why Naples? A crucial piece of the jigsaw fell into place when we read in a paper by Olaf Pedersen, a specialist in the religious aspects of the Galileo affair, that the reason for Galileo’s request and the odd refusal was that he wanted to visit Tommaso Campanella in his prison cell.19 In other words, the Church brings in the man who had condemned Bruno to warn Galileo off, and Galileo wants to consult Bruno’s successor Campanella; surely none of this was a coincidence.

  Having been denied a meeting with Galileo, Campanella rallied to the cause, penning the Defence of Galileo, which his followers published in Frankfurt. However, given Campanella’s reputation – one conviction for heresy and another for subversion, for which he was still doing time – the kind of support he could muster was hardly designed to enhance Galileo’s reputation. Which is probably why, back in Florence, Galileo kept his head down. Nothing in the Pope’s decree prevented the discussion of heliocentricity as a hypothesis, and many scholars were avidly doing just that. However, Galileo himself dropped the whole subjec
t for many years, although he was clearly waiting for an appropriate time to re-emerge as its iconic figurehead.

  A potential change for the better came in 1623 when one of Galileo’s old friends, Maffeo Barberini, became Pope Urban VIII. They had met at the Florentine court, and Barberini was an admirer of Galileo’s work, especially his research into the laws of motion. Galileo went to visit Urban in Rome the year after he was elected, and they had six private meetings – during which, as he himself reported in a letter to a friend, Galileo described all believers in Copernicus’ work as ‘heretics’.20 Clearly he had no desire for another confrontation with a Bellarmino clone.

  In another of those astonishing reversals of fortune that litter the history of that era, Urban’s election was also good news for Campanella. In 1626 Urban requested that the Spanish king release him from prison so he could travel to Rome to perform protective magic to ward off the evil effects of an eclipse that the Pope’s enemies had predicted would kill him. After twenty-seven years, not only was Campanella free but appointed adviser to the Pope. Urban even went so far as to grant him permission to found a college in Rome to train missionaries who espoused his religious and philosophical ideas. Such papal favour being bestowed on his greatest and most controversial supporter was another good sign for Galileo. In 1631, the year before it all fell apart, Urban even appointed him as a canon, which enabled him to draw income from two vacant benefices (without doing a day’s work in either).

  It was during this time that Galileo decided it was safe to have another stab at pushing the heliocentric theory. And so he wrote Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems – unusually for him in Italian rather than Latin, widening his potential readership – in which two scholars debate the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems, with a third adjudicating. It was published in Florence in 1632, having been granted formal approval by the Inquisition in that city. Galileo had even sought permission from Urban to publish; the latter only asked that his own views on the matter be included.