An Analysis of Langford’s “Galileo, Science and the Church”

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An Analysis of Chapter III and IV of Langford’s “Galileo, Science and the Church”
The general theory of the modern age that earth revolves around the sun is no more controversial. However, when Galileo passed his heliocentric theory in the seventeenth century, it raised a battle between religion and science. “Galileo, Science and the Church” by Langford discusses the allegations of the Roman Catholic Church on Galileo’s discoveries concerning earth and sun in the 1600s. Langford shows a new way to approach conflict between theologians and the scientist by emphasizing both parties' wrong angle to look at the issue. Chapter 3 of the book describes how criticism was raised against Galileo by the biblical views used by the new astronomy and the Catholic Church's official position on the Copernican Theory after censoring it in 1616.
Langford's central objective is to unveil the truth of Galileo’s tribulations to the reader and take the side of the scientist concerning his theories and wrongful blame of church violation. For this purpose, in chapter 3 of the book, he puts forth Galileo's critics and how they came upon with religious proves to accuse the scientist of sinful philosophies. Langford refers to Lodovico Delle Colombe, who made religious doctrine a fighting weapon against Galileo (Langford 50). This critic cited various quotes from the manuscript and presented them as proofs against the heliocentric theory. By taking excerpts from the holy book, he attempted to convince scholars and theologians that the earth is stationary while the sun revolves around it. Colombe was so convincing in his endeavor that Galileo began to feel the severity of the matter and inclined to resign from whatever he scientifically proved. However, he changed his mind as Galileo's kind friend encouraged him to continue his truth and ignore all outward pressures (Langford 51). In March 1613, Galileo made his Copernican support public; he faced more fierce opposition by the Church's influential people, who used quotes from the Bible to prove Galileo guilty. At that time, almost everyone supported religious views about the movement of the sun and the earth. Therefore, the new astronomy became a burning question among church authorities, critics, scholars and religious followers. Father TomassoCaccini stood on the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella in Florence and delivered a sermon strictly convicting Galileo’s heliocentricism. He reached an extreme that one of his sermons in the series began with a wrong quote of the Bible, in which he condemned Galileo by name, “ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven?” (Langford 55). Hence, he strongly protested the new astronomy and Galileo for following a scientific way to approach the matter of ‘moving earth.’ Langford continues his references by adding another influential theologian critic of the age, Bellarmine, who challenged Galileo on an intellectual basis to prove his hypothesis with scientific proofs. Meanwhile, he insisted on continuing Holy Scripture teaching the common public that the sun revolves around the earth. Thereby, Bellarmine did not feel the need to change the times-old notions an...