Galileo’s decision to recant was the best choice possible in the long run. Had Galileo not recanted, he likely would have been tortured, maybe even killed; while the Pope was reluctant to do so when Galileo might recant, there is no reason he might not change his mind if Galileo became a bigger threat. At the very least, he would have been arrested. He would have become a martyr for the cause of questioning everything, but a martyr rarely does much alone.
At absolute best, it would have spurred on a rebellion, which, after a long and likely body-strewn ‘war’, might have lead to a new age of enlightenment in the best-case scenario. In that case, it would be quite a while until everything settled down, and longer still until Galileo’s experiments were repeated, results found out, information published, and it still probably would not have been as respected as it was coming from Galileo. The worst-case scenario in a rebellion situation would have been a gory massacre.
Had Galileo been tortured or killed, he might have become an example of why to obey the Church, like Bruno was. That runs the risk of scaring everyone into obedience until they forget about it, or some other hero comes along.
Of all these situations, arrest is the most boring. Had Galileo simply been arrested, he would have been watched too closely to write anything useful, assuming he would have even been allowed to experiment at all.
Because Galileo did not recant, he was left in peace, in relatively good health, by the church, and was able to finish and write up his research.
By the logic of your argument, no one should resist authority, for at best it will lead to rebellion which will be bloodily crushed. And yet, as we know, revolt sometimes succeed.
ReplyDeleteOr are you suggesting that "sneaky" resistance is always better than open resistance?
I have no problem with resistance to authority, so long as their is a logic and a gain to it: authority says that humans need to breathe, and it would be stupid to stop breathing just because they told me to. Likewise, it would be foolish to sneak out of the house while I was grounded for no reason at all. I think that in revolutions, particularly those that are violent, a sneaky revolution is the best way for the rebels to go about it: it gives them a bit of an advatage when the odds are generally stacked against them.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the above is mostly a reflection on a particular revolution at a particular time and place. I think that, in Galileo's time, there were not that many people who the Pope would be unwilling to hurt to secure the power of the church, and fewer still that agreed with his views. If Galileo had died, then the people would have, if nothing else, grown uneasy: quite possibly worse. Without someone to orchistrate them, someone with connections and power, the people would be unable to stand up the the Church's army. The person who I just described as an ideal leader in that situation would agree with Galileo and his views, and I am unaware of anyone of the time who believed in Galileo to the extent of fighting a war. The people might well have, since they would have had more to gain in a fight about the right to common knowledge and the like, but most of the upper class only really stood to loose. All that together makes me think that if the people had rebelled, they would have been crushed (although the resentment would probably have simmered for a while before and after).
The other option I mentioned was that Galileo's ideas are merely lost. I never thought that loosing his ideas would cause a bloody rebellion, but I do support that it might very well set science back, anywhere from decades to centuries.
Does this clarify my position?
But you are of course assuming that no leader would rise up to lead the people. It raises an interesting and important historical question: the extent to which the times make the leaders. In other words, if there is a movement for change, will leaders (not necessarily good ones) always rise up to lead it? How much does the individual matter? In this case, you seem to be suggesting, the individual--Galileo--matters quite a bit.
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