Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/74

 in the fifteenth century, have gained a cardinal's hat? How could the German, Widmanstadt, have explained his theory, which was based upon the same principles, to Pope Clement VII. in 1533? How could learned men like Celio Calganini, Wurteis, and others, have given public lectures on the subject in Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century? Neither Casa, however, nor Widmanstadt, Calganini, Wurteis, nor even Copernicus, had ventured openly to declare war with the school of Aristotle, nor to overthrow by the crushing evidence of experiment the dogmas of natural science based upon philosophy and a priori arguments alone. These learned men had been tolerated because they fought with the same weapons as the followers of Ptolemy, logic and philosophy. They did not possess the powerful lever of direct evidence, because they were not acquainted with the telescope. But Galileo, with his fatal system of demonstration by observation of nature, was far too dangerous a foe. Peripateticism was no match for the home thrusts of arguments obvious to the senses, and its defenders were well aware that if they would not yield their position they must call in some other ally than mere science. And they adopted the means best adapted for putting a temporary drag on the wheels of truth, and for ruining Galileo; in order to prop up the failing authority of Aristotle they called in the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture!

This dragging of the Bible into what had previously been a purely scientific controversy, a proceeding which proved so fatal to Galileo, must not however, as has been done by several authors, be attributed solely to party considerations or even personal motives. This is absolutely false. Greatly as these factors were concerned in it, it must be admitted that at first they were only incidentally mixed up with it. The multitude of the learned, who still adhered entirely to the old system of the universe, and regarded the theories of Copernicus (not yet based on ocular demonstration) as mere fantasies, were really aghast at the telescopic discoveries