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Comment by yawboakye | Hacker News Reader

I'll try to answer in two parts. First you seem to have missed the point that (1) the Church was no (or rather accidental) arbiter of science—they largely deferred to the prevailing consensus. Thus in the conflict with Galileo, they were upholding a status quo which itself was upheld on the foundation of "many scientists believe that …" ie scientific consensus. You have a point if you say that Galileo wasn't a lone dissenting voice but then you'd have to explain what it was exactly that silenced Rene Descartes from publishing (as he confessed). He self-censored out of fear of contradicting the Church's position. If you bear in mind that the Church conducted no scientific experiments, Descartes essentially wasn't comfortable going up against the consensus.

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The Church did hold the consensus opinion, and accepted the minority opinion, Copernicanism, as a hypothesis. At that time, the epicycic systems made better predictions than Heliocentrism with round orbits. Kepler's later elliptical models did fit and won out after Galileo's day. Also, while Galileo presented some compelling evidence from astronomical observations, he was the only one able to make them, which made his claims difficult to confirm. He stated that Copernicanism was not a hypothesis, the Church tried to get him to walk that back, but Galileo bitterly feuded with an initially sympathetic, but ultimately hostile Pope Urban VIII enough to get himself in trouble. He was persecuted for defying the pope, the science was only a proximate cause to the root cause of his problem which was that he was rude to the pope.

That points to a bad system, but one that has nothing to do with the modern world we live in, and which if applied by analogy will fit so poorly as to be a bad analogy.

Also the Church conducted scientific experiments regularly, since a number of priests through the ages were scientists, and it was a result of priests taking observations in later, better telescopes that updated the Church's position on heliocentrism.

We don't disagree on all the factors leading up to Galileo's prosecution. But we should be careful judging why he was rude to the establishment. AFAIK it had all to do with the orthodoxy, not personal ongoing grudge. It's the same visceral rejection we have for obviously wrong/broken processes. The papacy around this time was in the throes of more urgent & existential problems, and so reaching for the huge mallet to kill Galileo once and for all made the most sense. Scientific consensus was that hammer.

That aside, individual priest carried out their experiments, not in the name of the Church. The Church had already leaned towards scholarship by this time (post-Bologna) and being the dominant component of all European cultures, it only made sense that it would attract people with interests in science and experiments. (By the time we had scientist-priests people didn't know why they were Christians, to begin with.) This is discounting roles in Church or its bodies—usually monasteries—that required a vow to dumbness.

> By the time we had scientist-priests people didn't know why they were Christians, to begin with.

What do you mean?

Christianity had become culture.

You mean ubiquitous? So? That's a non-sequitur.

I don't mean ubiquitous. I know what ubiquitous means. Latin wasn't ubiquitous in Rome. A thing of culture isn't ubiquitous. If anything it was transparent. Perhaps you should read about the era under observation before attempting to summarise/reinterpret?

Perhaps you should attempt to substantiate your nonsensical claim?

Perhaps you need a dictionary?

I don't. Perhaps you do? Are you unable to substantiate your nonsensical claim?

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