The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe/Part 2/Chapter 5

by Dorothy Stimson

 

CHAPTER V.

The Church and the New Astronomy: Conclusion

ASTRONOMICAL thought on the Continent was more hampered, in the Catholic countries especially, by the restrictive opinions of the Church. Yet in 1757, when the decree prohibiting all books dealing with the Copernican doctrine was removed from the Index, that system had already long been adopted by the more celebrated academies of Europe, for so Mme. de Premontval claimed in 1750; and it was then reaching out to non-scientific readers, through simple accounts for "ladies and others not well versed in these somewhat technical matters."^[1] The great landmark in the development of the doctrine was the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687, though its effect in Europe was of course slower in being felt than it was in England. Newton's work and that of the astronomers immediately following him was influential except where the Church's prohibitions still held sway.

During this period, the books published in free Holland were more outspoken in their radical acceptance or in their uncertainty of the truth than were those published in the Catholic countries. Christian Huygens's treatises on the plurality of worlds not only fully accepted the Copernican doctrine, but like those of Bishop Wilkins in England, deduced therefrom the probability that the other planets are inhabited even as the earth is. A writer^[2] on the sphere in 1697 stated the different theories of the universe so that his readers might choose the one that to them appeared the most probable. He himself preferred the Cartesian explanation as the simplest and most convenient of all, "though it should be held merely as an hypothesis and not as in absolute agreement with the truth." Pierre Bayle^[3] also explained the different systems, but appears himself to waver between the Copernican and the Tychonic conceptions. He used, however, the old word "perigee" (nearness to the earth) rather than the Newtonian "perihelion" (nearness to the sun). His objections to the Copernican doctrine have a familiar ring: It is contrary to the evidence of the senses; a stone would not fall back to its starting-place, nor could a bird return to her nest; the earth would not be equidistant from the horizon and the two poles; and lastly it is contrary to the Scriptures. Only a few years later, however, De Maupertius wrote that no one at that day (1744) doubted any longer the motion of the earth around its axis, and he believed with Newton that the laws of gravity applied to the universe as well as to the earth. Then he proceeded to explain the Copernican system which he favored on the ground of its greater probability.^[4]

Even in 1750, Mme. de Premontval thought it wiser to publish in Holland her little life of her father, Le Méchaniste Philosophe. This Jean Piegeon, she claimed, was the first man in France to make spheres according to the Copernican system. An orphan, he was educated by a priest; then took up carpentry and mechanics. When he tried to make a celestial sphere according to the Ptolemaic system, he became convinced of its falsity because of its complexities. Therefore he plunged into a study of the new system which he adopted. His first Copernican sphere was exhibited before Louis XIV at Versailles in 1706 and was bought by the king and presented to the Académie des Sciences.^[5] The second was taken to Canada by one of the royal officials. Public interest in his work was keen; even Peter the Great, who was then in Paris, visited his workroom.^[6] M. Piegeon also wrote a book on the Copernican system.^[7]

It seems, however, as though M. Piegeon were slightly in advance of his age, or more daring, perhaps, than his contemporaries, for there was almost no outspoken support of the Copernican system at this time in France. Even Cassini of the French Académie des Sciences did not explicitly support it, though he spoke favorably of it and remarked that recent observations had demonstrated the revolutions of each planet around the sun in accordance with that supposition.^[8] But the great orator, Bossuet, (1627-1703), clung to the Ptolemaic conception as alone orthodox, and scriptural.^[9] Abbé Fenélon (1651-1715) writing on the existence of God, asked: "Who is it who has hung up this motionless ball of the earth; who has placed the foundations for it," and "who has taught the sun to turn ceasely and regularly in spaces where nothing troubles it?"^[10] And a writer on the history of the heavens as treated by poets, philosophers and Moses (1739), tells Gassendi, Descartes and many other great thinkers that their ideas of the heavens are proved vain and false by daily experience as well as by the account of Creation; for the most enlightened experience is wholly and completely in accord with the account of Moses. This book was written, the author said, for young people students of philosophy and the humanities, also for teachers.^[11]

The Jesuit order, still a power in Europe in the early 18th century, was bound to the support of the traditional view, which led them into some curious positions in connection with the discoveries made in astronomy during this period. Thus the famous Jesuit astronomer Boscovich (1711-1787) published in Rome in 1746 a study of the ellipticity of the orbits of planets which necessitated the use of the Copernican position; he stated he had assumed it as true merely to facilitate his labors. In the second edition (1785) published some years after the removal from the Index of the decree against books teaching the Copernican doctrine (at his instigation, it is claimed),^[12] he added a note to this passage asking the reader to remember the time and the place of its former publication.^[13] Just at the end of the preceding century, one of the seminary fathers at Liège maintained that were the earth to move, being made up of so many and divers combustible materials, it would soon burst into flames and be reduced to ashes!^[14]

During the 18th century at Louvain the Copernican doctrine was warmly supported, but as a theory. A MS. of a course given there in 1748 has come down to us, in which the professor, while affirming its hypothetical character, described it as a simple, clear and satisfactory explanation of the phenomena, then answered all the objections made against it by theologians, physicists, and astronomers.^[15] A few years earlier, (1728) a Jesuit at Liège, though well acquainted with Newton's work, declared: "For my part I do not doubt the least in the world that the earth is eternally fixed, for God has founded the terrestrial globe, and it will not be shaken."^[16] Another priest stated in the first chapter of his astronomy that the sun and the planets daily revolve around the earth; then later on, he explained the Copernican and the Tychonic schemes and the Cartesian theory of motion with evident sympathy.^[17] Two others, one a Jesuit in 1682 at Naples,^[18] the other in 1741 at Verona, frankly preferred the Tychonic system, and the latter called the system found by "Tommaso Copernico" a mere fancy.^[19] Still another priest, evidently well acquainted with Bradley's work, as late as in 1774 declared that there was nothing decisive on either side of the great controversy between the systems.^[20] At this time, however, a father was teaching the Copernican system at Liège without differentiating between thesis and hypothesis.^[21] And a Jesuit, while he denied (1772) universal gravitation, the earth's movement, and the plurality of inhabited worlds, declared that the Roman Congregation had done wrong in charging these as heretical suggestions. In fact, M. Monchamp, himself a Catholic priest at Louvain, declared that the Newtonian proofs were considered by many in the 18th century virtually to abrogate the condemnation of 1616 and 1633; hence the professors of the seminary at Liège had adopted the Copernican system.^[22]

The famous French astronomer Lalande, in Rome in 1757 when the Inquisition first modified its position, tried to persuade the authorities to remove Galileo's book also from the Index; but his efforts were unavailing, because of the sentence declared against its author.^[23] In 1820 Canon Settele was not allowed by the Master of the Sacred Palace to publish his textbook because it dealt with the forbidden subject. His appeal to the Congregation itself resulted, as we have seen, in the decree of 1822 removing this as a cause for prohibition. Yet as late as in 1829, when a statue to Copernicus was being unveiled at Warsaw, and a great convocation had met in the church for the celebration of the mass as part of the ceremony, at the last moment the clergy refused in a body to attend a service in honor of a man whose book was on the Index.^[24]

Thus the Roman Catholic Church by reason of its organization and of its doctrine requiring obedience to its authority was more conspicuous for its opposition as a body to the Copernican doctrine, even though as individuals many of its members favored the new system. But the Protestant leaders were quite as emphatic in their denunciations, though less influential because of the Protestant idea of the right to individual belief and interpretation. Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Turrettin,^[25] Owen, and Wesley are some of the notable opponents to it. And when the scientific objections had practically disappeared, those who interpreted the Scriptures literally were still troubled and hesitant down to the present day. Not many years ago, people flocked to hear a negro preacher of the South, Brother Jasper, uphold with all his ability that the sun stood still at Joshua's command, and that today "the sun do move!" Far more surprising is this statement in the new Catholic Encyclopedia under "Faith," written by an English Dominican:

"If, now, the will moves the intellect to consider some debatable point—e.g., the Copernican and Ptolemaic theories of the relationship between the sun and the earth—it is clear that the intellect can only assent to one of these views in proportion that it is convinced that the particular view is true. But neither view has, as far as we can know, more than probable truth, hence of itself the intellect can only give in its partial adherence to one of these views, it must always be precluded from absolute assent by the possibility that the other may be right. The fact that men hold more tenaciously to one of these than the arguments warrant can only be due to some extrinsic consideration, e.g., that it is absurd not to hold to what a vast majority of men hold."

In astronomical thought as in many another field, science and reason have had a hard struggle in men's minds to defeat tradition and the weight of verbal inspiration. Within the Roman Catholic Church opposition to this doctrine was officially weakened in 1757, but not completely ended till the publication of the Index in 1835—the first edition since the decrees of 1616 and 1619 which did not contain the works of Copernicus, Galileo, Foscarini, à Stunica and Kepler. Since then, Roman Catholic writers have been particularly active in defending and explaining the positions of the Church in these matters. They have not agreed among themselves as to whether the infallibility of the Church had been involved in these condemnations, nor as to the reasons for them. As one writer has summarized these diverse positions,^[26] they first claimed that Galileo was condemned not for upholding a heresy, but for attempting to reconcile these ideas with the Scriptures,—though in fact he was sentenced specifically for heresy. In their next defense they declared Galileo was not condemned for heresy, but for contumacy and want of respect to the Pope.^[27] This statement proving untenable, others held that it was the result of a persecution developing out of a quarrel between Aristotelian professors and those professors who favored experiment,—a still worse argument for the Church itself. Then some claimed that the condemnation was merely provisional,—a position hardly warranted by the wording of the decrees themselves and flatly contradicted by Father Riccioli, the spokesman of the Jesuit authorities.^[28] More recently, Roman Catholics have held that Galileo was no more a victim of the Roman Church than of the Protestant—which fails to remove the blame of either. The most recent position is that the condemnation of the doctrine by the popes was not as popes but as men simply, and the Church was not committed to their decision since the popes had not signed the decrees. But two noted English Catholics, Roberts and Mivart, publicly stated in 1870 that the infallibility of the papacy was fully committed in these condemnations by what they termed incontrovertible evidence.^[29]

One present-day Catholic calls the action of the Congregations "a theoretical mistake;"^[30] another admits it was a deplorable mistake, but practically their only serious one;^[31] and a third considers it "providential" since it proved conclusively "that whenever there is apparent contradiction between the truths of science and the truths of faith, either the scientist is declaring as proved what in reality is a mere hypothesis, or the theologian is putting forth his own personal views instead of the teaching of the Gospel."^[32] Few would accept today, however, the opinion of the anonymous writer in the Dublin Review in the forties that "to the Pontiffs and dignitaries of Rome we are mainly indebted for the Copernican system" and that the phrases "heretical" and "heresy" in the sentence of 1633 were but the stylus curiæ, for it was termed heresy only in the technical sense.^[33]

The majority of Protestants, with the possible exception of the Lutherans, were satisfied with the probable truth of the Copernican doctrine before the end of the 18th century. Down to the present day, however, there have been isolated protests raised against it, usually on technical grounds supported by reference to the Scriptures. DeMorgan refers to one such, "An Inquiry into the Copernican System … wherein it is proved in the clearest manner, that the earth has only her diurnal motion … with an attempt to point out the only true way whereby mankind can receive any real benefit from the study of the heavenly bodies, by John Cunningham, London, 1789," DeMorgan adds that "the true way appears to be the treatment of heaven and earth as emblematical of the Trinity."^[34] Another, by "Anglo-American," is entitled "Copernicus Refuted; or the True Solar System" (Baltimore, 1846). It begins thus:

"One of these must go, the other stand still,
It matters not which, so choose at your will;
But when you find one already stuck fast,
You've only got Hobson's choice left at last."

This writer admits the earth's axial rotation, but declares the earth is fixed as a pivot in the center of the universe, because the poles of the earth are fixed and immovable, and that the sun as in the Tychonic scheme encircles the earth and is itself encircled by five planets.^[35] His account of the origin of the Copernican system is noteworthy: it was originated by Pythagoras and his deciples but lay neglected because it was held to be untenable in their time; it was "revived when learning was at its lowest ebb by a monk in his cloister, Copernicus, who in ransacking the contents of the monastery happened to lay his hands on the MS. and then published it to the world with all its blunders and imperfections!"^[36] One might remark that the Anglo-American's own learning was at very low ebb.

The Tychonic scheme was revived also some years later by a Dane, Zytphen (1856).^[37] Three years after, an assembly of Lutheran clergy met together at Berlin to protest against "science falsely so-called,"^[38] but were brought into ridicule by Pastor Knap's denunciations of the Copernican theory as absolutely incompatible with belief in the Bible. A Carl Schoepffer had taken up the defense of the Tychonic scheme in Berlin before this (1854) and by 1868 his lecture was in its seventh edition. In it he sought to prove that the earth revolves neither upon its own axis nor yet about the sun. He had seen Foucault's pendulum demonstration of the earth's movement, but he held that something else, as yet unexplained, caused the deviation of the pendulum, and that the velocity of the heavens would be no more amazing than the almost incredible velocity of light or of electricity.^[39] His lecture, curiously enough, fell into the hands of the late General John Watts de Peyster of New York, who had it translated and published in 1900 together with a supplement by Frank Allaben.^[40] Both these gentlemen accepted its scientific views and deductions, but the General refused to go as far as his colleague in the latter's enthusiastic acceptance of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures as a result of these statements.^[41] A few months later, they published a supplementary pamphlet claiming to prove the possibility of the sun's velocity by the analogy of the velocity of certain comets.^[42] A Professor J. R. Lange of California (a German), attracted by these documents, sent them his own lucubrations on this subject. He considered Newton's doctrine of universal attraction "nonsense," and had "absolute proof" in the fixity of the Pole Star that the earth does not move.^[43] In a letter to General de Peyster, he wrote: "Let us hope and pray that the days of the pernicious Copernican system may be numbered,"^[44]—but he did not specify why he considered it pernicious: The General was nearly eighty years old when he became interested in these matters, and he did not live long thereafter to defend his position. His biographers make no mention of it. The other men seem almost obsessed, especially Lange;—like the Italian painter, Sindico, who bombarded the director of the Paris Observatory in 1878 with many letters protesting against the Copernican system.^[45]

German writers, whether Lutherans or not, appear to have opposed the system more often in the last century than have the writers of other nationalities. Besides those already mentioned, one proposed an ingenious scheme in which the sun moves through space followed by the planets as a comet is by its tail, the planets revolving in a plane perpendicular to that of the sun's path. A diagram of it would be cone-shaped. He included in this pamphlet, besides a list of his own books, (all published in Leipsic), a list of twenty-six titles from 1758 to 1883, books and pamphlets evidently opposed in whole or in part to the modern astronomy, and seventeen of these were in German or printed in Germany.^[46] In this country at St. Louis was issued an Astronomische Unterredung (1873) by J. C. W. L.; according to the late President White, a bitter attack on modern astronomy and a decision by the Scriptures that the earth is the principal body of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that the sun and the moon only serve to light it.^[47]

Such statements are futile in themselves nowadays, and are valuable only to illustrate the advance of modern thought of which these are the little eddies. While modern astronomers know far more than Copernicus even dreamed of, much of his work still holds true today. The world was slow to accept his system because of tradition, authority, so-called common sense, and its supposed incompatibility with scriptural passages. Catholic and Protestant alike opposed it on these grounds; but because of its organization and authority, the Roman Catholic Church had far greater power and could more successfully hinder and delay its acceptance than could the Protestants. Consequently the system won favor slowly at first through the indifference of the authorities, then later in spite of their active antagonism. Scholars believed it long before the universities were permitted to teach it; and the rationalist movement of the 18th century, the revolt against a superstitious religion, helped to overturn the age-old conception of the heavens and to bring Newtonian-Copernicanism into general acceptance.

The elements of this traditional conception are summarized in the fifth book of Bodin's Universæ Naturæ Theatrum, a scholar's account of astronomy at the close of the sixteenth century.^[48] Man in his terrestrial habitation occupies the center of a universe created solely to serve him, God presides over all from the Empyrean above, sending forth his messengers the angels to guide and control the heavenly bodies. Such had been the thought of Christians for more than a thousand years. Then came the influence of a new science. Tycho Brahe "broke the crystal spheres of Aristotle"^[49] by his study of the comet of 1572; Galileo's telescopes revealed many stars hitherto unknown, and partly solved the mysteries of the Milky Way; Kepler's laws explained the courses of the planets, and Newton's discovery of the universal application of the forces of attraction relieved the angels of their duties among the heavens. Thinkers like Bruno proposed the possibility of other systems and universes besides the solar one in which the earth belongs. And thus not only did man shrink in importance in his own eyes; but his conception of the heavens changed from that of a finite place inexplicably controlled by the mystical beings of a supernatural world, to one of vast and infinite spaces traversed by bodies whose density and mass a man could calculate, whose movements he could foretell, and whose very substance he could analyze by the science of today. This dissolution of superstition, especially in regard to comets was notably rapid and complete after the comet of 1680.^[50] Thus the rationalist movement with the new science opened men's minds to a universe composed of familiar substances and controlled by known or knowable laws with no tinge remaining of the supernatural. Today a man's theological beliefs are not shaken by the discovery of a new satellite or even a new planet, and the appearance of a new comet merely provides the newspaper editor with the subject of a passing jest.

Yet it was fully one hundred and fifty years after the publication of the De Revolutionibus before its system met with the general approval of scholars as well as of mathematicians; then nearly a generation more had to elapse before it was openly taught even at Oxford where the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches had no control. During the latter part of this period, readers were often left free to decide for themselves as to the relative merits of the Tychonic and Copernican or Copernican-Cartesian schemes. But it took fully fifty years and more, besides, before these ideas had won general acceptance by the common people, so wedded were they to the traditional view through custom and a superstitious reverence for the Bible. Briefly then, the De Revolutionibus appeared in 1543; and quietly won some supporters, notably Bruno, Kepler and Galileo; the Congregations of the Index specifically opposed it in 1616 and 1633; however it continued to spread among scholars and others with the aid of Cartesianism for another fifty years till the appearance of Newton's Principia in 1687. Then its acceptance rapidly became general even in Catholic Europe, till it was almost a commonplace in England by 1743, two hundred years after its first formal promulgation, and had become strong enough in Europe to cause the Congregations in 1757 to modify their stand. Thereafter opposition became a curiosity rather than a significant fact. Only the Roman Church officially delayed its recognition of the new astronomy till the absurdity of its obsolete position was brought home to it by Canon Settele's appeal in 1820. Fifteen years later the last trace of official condemnation was removed, a little over two hundred years after the decrees had first been issued, and just before Bessel's discovery of stellar parallax at length answered one of the strongest and oldest arguments against the system. Since then have come many apologias in explanation and extenuation of the Church's decided stand in this matter for so many generations.

Though Galileo himself was forced to his knees, unable to withstand his antagonists, his work lived on after him; he and Copernicus, together with Kepler and Newton stand out both as scientists and as leaders in the advance of intellectual enlightenment. The account of their work and that of their less well-known supporters, compared with that of their antagonists, proves the truth of the ancient Greek saying which Rheticus used as the motto for the Narratio Prima, the first widely known account of the Copernican system: "One who intends to philosophize must be free in mind."

1. de Premontval: Le Méchaniste Philosophe, 54, 72. (The Hague, 1750).
2. de Brisbar: Calendrier Historique, (Leyden), 228-233.
3. Bayle: Système Abregé de Philosophie (The Hague, 1731), IV, 394-412.
4. de Maupertius: Eléments de Geographie, xv, 9-14.
5. de Premontval: 123.
6. Ibid: 132.
7. Ibid: 157.
8. Cassini: De l'Origine et du Progrés. 35.
9. Shields: 59. I have failed to find this reference in Bossuet's works.
10. Fénélon: Oeuvres, I, 3 and 7.
11. Pluche: Histoire du Ciel: viii, ix, xiii.
12. Cath. Ency.: "Boscovitch."
13. Opera: III (1785).
14. Cited in Monchamp: 335 note.
15. Ibid: 326.
16. Ibid: 330.
17. Fontana: Institutio, II, 32-35.
18. Ferramosca: Positiones… :19.
19. Piccoli: La Scienza, 4, 7.
20. Spagnio, De Motu, 81.
21. Monchamp: 331.
22. Monchamp: 345.
23. Bailly: II, 132, note.
24. Flammarion: 196-198.
25. Shields: 60.
26. White: I, 159-167.
27. See di Bruno: Catholic Belief, 286a.
28. Riccioli: Apologia, 103.
29. White: I, 165. See the answer by Wegg-Prosser: Galileo and his Judges.
30. Donat: 183.
31. Walsh: Popes and Science, 17.
32. Conway: 48.
33. Anon.: Galileo—the Roman Congregation, 39, 60.
34. De Morgan: I, 172.
35. "Anglo-American": 5-6.
36. Ibid: 11.
37. De Morgan: II, 335.
38. White: I, 150.
39. Schoepffer: The Earth Stands Fast, title-page, 6-7.
40. Ibid: Supplement by Allaben, 21, 74.
41. Ibid: Note by J. W. de P., 74.
42. De Peyster and Allaben: Algol, preface.
43. Lange: The Copernican System: The Greatest Absurdity in the History of Human Thought.
44. De Peyster and Allaben: Algol, 74.
45. Sindico: Refutation du Sysfème de Copernic …
46. Tischner: Le Système Solaire se Mouvant. (1894).
47. White: I, 151.
48. See translated sections in Appendix C.
49. Robinson: 107.
50. Ibid: 119.