Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!
It’s the year 1633, and we know a heretic when we spot one.
Everyone, as led by our Roman Catholic Church, subscribes to a geocentric model of the universe. We are in absolute agreement that the Earth is the unmoving center of a system of planets, all of which revolve around terra firma (solid earth in Latin). Anyone who thinks otherwise is party to a dangerous conspiracy theory.
The ancient Greeks were some of first to outline our status quo. In particular, it was Claudius Ptolemy (c.100-170 CE) and others before him like Aristotle, who told us that the sun, moon, and planets, revolve around Earth. Ptolemy’s essential work, the Almagest, originally titled Mathematike Syntaxis, has shaped our understanding of astronomy for more than 14 centuries. But there are a few unexplained problems with his mathematical charts, like that damned retrograde motion where the planets slow down and then appear to go backwards for a short time.
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, in which he defined a new cosmological model and began a shift towards heliocentrism, with the Sun at the center and planets revolving around it. He dedicated the work to Pope Paul III.
Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) respected the work of Copernicus but could not fully accept it because it conflicted with his current religious beliefs. He tried to compromise the two systems with a geoheliostatic model in which the two inner planets revolved around the sun, and together with the rest of the planets, they all still revolved around the earth. By 1600, the Copernican system had not yet been declared a heresy by the church.
Then along comes Galileo, telescope in hand, to prove that heliocentrism, one of greatest conspiracy theories of all time, was in fact true. The Church declared him a heretic and proclaimed that geocentrism was unquestionably the word of God as written in the Bible. The Earth does not move.
“He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.” Psalm 104:4-5
On April 12, 1633, chief inquisitor Father Vincenzo Maculani da Firenzuola, appointed by Pope Urban VIII, began the inquisition of physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. Galileo's findings were confirmed to be heresy and lies.
“We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo… have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world.”
Along with their June 22, 1633 findings, they rendered a severe penalty:
“We order that by a public edict the book of Dialogues of Galileo Galilei be prohibited, and We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure; and as a salutary penance We enjoin on thee that for the space of three years thou shalt recite once a week the Seven Penitential Psalms.”
Galileo agreed not to teach the heresy anymore and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It took more than 300 years for the Church to admit that Galileo was right and to clear his name of heresy.
The "Copernican Revolution" as it came to be known, is still underway in the USA according to a somewhat recent survey of 2,200 participants conducted by the National Science Foundation. Only 74% of participants knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun. That’s 1 in 4 Americans who don’t comprehend one of the most fundamental principles of basic science.
Only 48% of Americans surveyed believed that humans evolved from earlier species of animals, which is the perfect segue to my next article on conspiracies, “Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution. Stay tuned…