Their world-view was false, but it was not illogical. Admittedly they believed in revelation and traditional authority as sources of reliable knowledge. But they also had an independent reason for criticizing the reliability of knowledge obtained by Galileo’s methods. They could simply point out that no amount of observation or argument can ever prove that one explanation of a physical phenomenon is true and another false. As they would put it, God could produce the same observed effects in an infinity of different ways, so it is pure vanity and arrogance to claim to possess a way of knowing, merely through one’s own fallible observation and reason, which way He chose.
To some extent they were merely arguing for modesty, for a recognition of human fallibility. And if Galileo was claiming that the heliocentric theory was somehow proven, or nearly so, in some inductive sense, they had a point. If Galileo thought that his methods could confer on any theory an authority comparable to that which the Church claimed for its doctrines, they were right to criticize him as arrogant (or, as they would have put it, blasphemous), though of course by the same standard they were much more arrogant themselves.
So how can we defend Galileo against the Inquisition? What should Galileo’s defence have been in the face of this charge of claiming too much when he claimed that scientific theories contain reliable knowledge of reality? The Popperian defence of science as a process of problem-solving and explanation-seeking is not sufficient in itself. For the Church too was primarily interested in explanations and not predictions, and it was quite willing to let Galileo solve problems using any theory he chose. It was just that they did not accept that Galileo’s solutions (which they would call mere ‘mathematical hypotheses’) had any bearing on external reality. Problem-solving, after all, is a process that takes place entirely within human minds. Galileo may have seen the world as a book in which the laws of nature are written in mathematical symbols. But that is strictly a metaphor; there are no explanations in orbit out there with the planets. The fact is that all our problems and solutions are located within ourselves, having been created by ourselves. When we solve problems in science we arrive through argument at theories whose explanations seem best to us. So, without in any way denying that it is right and proper, and useful, for us to solve problems, the Inquisition and modern sceptics might legitimately ask what scientific problem-solving has to do with reality. We may find our ‘best explanations’ psychologically satisfying. We may find them helpful in making predictions. We certainly find them essential in every area of technological creativity. All this does justify our continuing to seek them and to use them in those ways. But why should we be obliged to take them as fact? The proposition that the Inquisition forced Galileo to endorse was in effect this: that the Earth is in fact at rest, with the Sun and planets in motion around it; but that the paths on which these astronomical bodies travel are laid out in a complex way which, when viewed from the vantage-point of the Earth, is also consistent with the Sun being at rest and the Earth and planets being in motion. Let me call that the ‘Inquisition’s theory’ of the solar system. If the Inquisition’s theory were true, we should still expect the heliocentric theory to make accurate predictions of the results of all Earth-based astronomical observations, even though it would be factually false. It would therefore seem that any observations that appear to support the heliocentric theory lend equal support to the Inquisition’s theory.
One could extend the Inquisition’s theory to account for more detailed observations that support the heliocentric theory, such as observations of the phases of Venus, and of the small additional motions (called ‘proper motions’) of some stars relative to the celestial sphere. To do this one would have to postulate even more complex manoeuvrings in space, governed by laws of physics very different from those that operate on our supposedly stationary Earth. But they would be different in precisely such a way as to remain observationally consistent with the Earth being in motion and the laws being the same out there as they are here. Many such theories are possible. Indeed, if making the right predictions were our only constraint, we could invent theories which say that anything we please is going on in space. For example, observations alone can never rule out the theory that the Earth is enclosed in a giant planetarium showing us a simulation of a heliocentric solar system; and that outside the planetarium there is anything you like, or nothing at all. Admittedly, to account for present-day observations the planetarium would also have to redirect our radar and laser pulses, capture our space probes, and indeed astronauts, send back fake messages from them and return them with appropriate moonrock samples, altered memories, and so on. It may be an absurd theory, but the point is that it cannot be ruled out by experiment. Nor is it valid to rule out any theory solely on the grounds that it is ‘absurd’: the Inquisition, together with most of the human race in Galileo’s time, thought it the epitome of absurdity to claim that the Earth is moving. After all, we cannot feel it moving, can we? When it does move, as in an earthquake, we feel that unmistakably. It is said that Galileo delayed publicly advocating the heliocentric theory for some years, not for fear of the Inquisition but simply for fear of ridicule.
To us, the Inquisition’s theory looks hopelessly contrived. Why should we accept such a complicated and ad hoc account of why the sky looks as it does, when the unadorned heliocentric cosmology does the same job with less fuss? We may cite the principle of Occam’s razor: ‘do not multiply entities beyond necessity’ — or, as I prefer to put it, ‘do not complicate explanations beyond necessity’, because if you do, the unnecessary complications themselves remain unexplained. However, whether an explanation is or is not ‘contrived’ or ‘unnecessarily complicated’ depends on all the other ideas and explanations that make up one’s world-view. The Inquisition would have argued that the idea of the Earth moving is an unnecessary complication. It contradicts common sense; it contradicts Scripture; and (they would have said) there is a perfectly good explanation that does without it.
But is there? Does the Inquisition’s theory really provide alternative explanations without having to introduce the counter-intuitive ‘complication’ of the heliocentric system? Let us take a closer look at how the Inquisition’s theory explains things. It explains the apparent stationarity of the Earth by saying that it is stationary. So far, so good. On the face of it that explanation is better than Galileo’s, for he had to work very hard, and contradict some common-sense notions of force and inertia, to explain why we do not feel the Earth move. But how does the Inquisition’s theory cope with the more difficult task of explaining planetary motions?