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This led to a change in the Catholic Church. The church made a rapid move towards a centralized authoritarian government—an organization with the literal interpretation of Scripture as an important emphasis.

How did the church respond to Galileo's theory?

There was a committee established called the Holy Office, which had the responsibility to determine the truth in matters of faith. Charges were leveled against Galileo, and so the heliocentric question came before them.

We don't know much about what went on in their considerations. But it's important to look at the whole picture. And one part of that picture is that the scientific community is overwhelmingly opposed to Galileo. That is, the evidence that Galileo has is not particularly powerful. It's not overpowering. He was looked on as a crackpot by lots of scientists.

If we combine this picture with the authority of the Catholic Church to interpret the Bible—and their new attention to literal interpretation—it's just clear what the answer is going to be. They're not going to violate their own hermeneutic exegetical standards in order to adopt this crackpot minority opinion of the scientific community.

So then he goes before a papal court. It wasn't his science that was on trial, though. What was he tried for?

Obedience was the only issue in the trial. And he was guilty. Everybody could tell he was guilty because Galileo doesn't just discuss the pros and cons of the theory, he just advocates all the way. It was a blunder on Galileo's part.

Galileo then recants. Why?

He had two choices. There was the threat of imprisonment or he could recant. Everybody knew it was a formality, so he didn't cost his cause anything to recant.

How did the theory of the sun as the center of the universe finally get accepted by the church?

Once Newton's theory of gravitation came along, you had overwhelming arguments in favor of heliocentrism. The church says, "Okay, now we've got proof, so now we will reinterpret the Bible."

By the end of the 17th century, the church was on board, though Copernicus's book stayed on the index of prohibited books until 1835. This geocentric model remained an albatross around the Catholic Church's neck.

How did this become an area of focus for you?

Religion has been part of my life since I was born. I grew up in an intensely religious evangelical home. My father and both grandfathers were members of the clergy.

I went to Wheaton College, where I majored in physics. I then went on as a graduate student in physics at Northwestern University. But as I proceeded with my education, I became disillusioned with physics when it ceased to deal with the world that I could see and feel. It became abstract mathematics.

I encountered history of science at that point, and went back to graduate school. I became a historian of medieval and early modern science. But in the early 1980s a colleague approached me about organizing a conference on science and religion. This was not a topic I had really worked with, but it struck a chord because of my own religious background. The conference led to a book, God and Nature. Really, I've now spent the last 20 years mainly thinking about the historical relations of science and religion.

How do you reconcile the struggle between religion and science?

I follow St. Augustine on the issue. Augustine says in one of his works that if you want to know astronomy, do not go to the Bible. Find yourself an astronomer. It seems to me that is the kind of attitude we're just going to have to take.

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February (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47