Catholic heliocentrism: no apology necessary
I've been following a few pro-science/anti-creationist blogs for the last couple of months, and thanks to one of them, I have discovered that evolution is not the only widely held scientific orthodoxy to be attacked by religious fundamentalists and Biblical literalists. It turns out that a Catholic apologist website has issued a Geocentrism Challenge:Catholic Apologists International is offering $1000 to anyone who can prove to their satisfaction that the earth revolves around the sun.
Now the kicker here has several parts:
And so things stood for centuries, until better and better observations with more and more precise instruments (such as the telescope) in the 16th and 17th centuries cast some serious doubt on the old-school Ptolemaic model of a static Earth, surrounded by a sun, moon, planets and stars all orbiting in perfect circles and epicycles. Copernicus again proposed a heliocentric model in 1543, but still with perfectly circular orbits and epicycles, because the notion that things are not perfect in heaven was obviously heretical and absurd. Kepler and Galileo, however, showed that the planets traveled in elliptical orbits, that Jupiter had its own moons (i.e. not everything revolved around the earth), and that the moon had craters and mountains (i.e. celestial bodies are not perfect spheres), basically sounding a death knell for the Aristotelean model of the cosmos.
Unfortunately, since the Catholic Church had embraced that model for so long, change was a little slow in coming. Tycho Brahe proposed his own model, wherein the planets revolved around the sun, and the sun, moon and stars revolved around the earth; this was a sort of compromise between the geocentric dictates of the Church and the increasingly heliocentric bent of practicing astronomers (all of whom, by the way, were devout Christians). Unfortunately, since the Tychonian model still relied on circular orbits, it got discarded (including by Brahe himself) after Kepler showed that elliptical orbits better explained Brahe's own data. 3 Newton's theory of gravity, whch provided an elegant solution to the question of why the planets move in elliptical orbits, was just icing on the cake.
Even given all this, the debate raged on for two more centuries, until telescopes got good enough for Friedrich Bessel to observe stellar parallax in 1838 That is the same stellar parallax, mentioned above, whose lack of visibility was the main argument against heliocentrism. The heliocentric model predicted it, and two thousand years later, it was confirmed by observation. Among astronomers at least, that pretty much closed the case.
In the 20th century, however, there has been a religiously motivated attempt by some Biblical literalists to revive geocentrism (and its even more radical cousin, geostatism - the idea that the earth does not move in any way) in the form of the neo-Tychonian model of the universe. This model modifies Brahe's original by allowing elliptical orbits and having the stars as well as the planets revolve around the sun, with the sun and its satellites (everything else in the universe besides the moon) revolving around the earth, which remains perfectly stationary in the center. Such a view requires a denial of a long laundry list of items: most of contemporary astronomy, both Newtonian and Einsteinian mechanics (especially gravity as a force that guides celestial motion), the Coriolis force, the existence of interplanetary space probes, and so on. It also requires a mechanism for why the sun, moon and stars move as the neo-Tychonians say they do (why do the stars orbit the sun, while the sun orbits the earth?) All of this to defend a Church that does not require its members to believe in geocentrism.
Sungenis will hardly convince any astronomers, and probably not very many laypersons anymore (unless one is willing to believe that the entire space probe program is a massive hoax). However, as long as said laypersons don't think too hard about what they'd have to reject in order to embrace geostatism and geocentrism, Sungenis can plant far and wide the seeds of doubt about heliocentrism, and by extension, science in general. That's because most people haven't really come to grips with the fact that all empirical truths are contingent, not necessary, and that absolute certainty is impossible. All scientific knowledge consists of theories -- our collective best guess at present -- not indisputable "facts", and can be revised, or discarded, at any time if strong enough contradictory evidence arises. However -- and this is where the religiously motivated revisionists fall flat -- we must be honest and fair, and not defend a theory just because it's our favorite one. As Richard Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool."
Footnotes:
1 "[In] 1741... Benedict XIV bid the Holy Office grant an imprimatur to the first edition of the Complete Works of Galileo, Copernican heliocentrism and all, a fact conveniently omitted by Robert Sungenis when he claims that accepting heliocentrism substantially undercuts Church authority.
2 "Often Occam’s razor is used to refute Revelation, reasoning that heliocentrism is more ‘intellectually satisfying’ and intrinsically beautiful than geostatism, that the simpler of theories is preferred.... Occam’s razor seems innocuous, especially in its subjective appeal to an abstract concept of ‘beauty’. Who is to decide what is beautiful? It’s actually demonic, as is evident in its subtlety.... Revelation is always primary, always the trump card of truth. Only when this trump is used up, can appeal be made to such as Occam’s principle." -- CAI
3 I seem to recall reading that Kepler fudged the numbers slightly in order to better fit the elliptical orbit model, but happened to push them in the right direction (Brahe's data set was slightly inaccurate to begin with, owing to the imprecision of the instruments available at that time). Later observations have proved Kepler's laws of planetary motion to be basically correct.
Further Reading (That I have not yet read):
De Labore Solis: Airy's Failure Reconsidered, by Walter van de Kamp, is a book-length elaboration of the neo-Tychonian argument, if anyone is interested.
"Lessons of the Galileo Case," Origins, vol. 22, no. 22 (12 Nov 1992). Pope John Paul II's address to the Pontifical Academy of Science, 31 Oct 1992.
Now the kicker here has several parts:
- The apologists in question (led here by Robert Sungenis) are literally religiously devoted to the geocentric model; much more so, in fact, than the Catholic Church itself. 1
- Thus, said apologists are equally hostile to heliocentrism.
- The notion of "proof", therefore, would have to be absolute for these people to accept it and award the prize.
- However, as anyone knows who was paying attention in philosophy class, David Hume showed that induction from observation (the basis of empirical science) cannot lead to absolute, certain knowledge of any future event (because our presumption that the future will resemble the past rests on no sure epistemological foundation). In other words, there is no such thing as an absolute proof regarding real-world phenomena. That's why no scientist discovers natural "laws" anymore, but merely postulates hypotheses which, if they're lucky, survive, explain, and predict enough to be elevated to the grand status of theory, which is as close as science can get to Truth with a capital T. See also: Karl Popper and the doctrine of falsifiability.
- There is also, given a particular set of data, an infinite number of theories that can fit that data equally well, thus presenting a practical problem for science which is solved by applying Occam's Razor. The apologists, unfortunately, by embracing a geostatic model, epicycles and all, have rejected Occam's Razor as "demonic." 2 Therefore, it doesn't matter how much simpler, cleaner, and more elegant a solution the heliocentric model is - Sungenis and his fellow apologists will prefer geocentrism regardless.
- Heliocentrism - the theory that the sun sits at the center of things - is, strictly speaking, no longer regarded as true in the grand scheme of things. Not only does the Sun and its satellites move with respect to other stars, but the notion that there is any point that stands out as the unmoving center of the cosmos is refuted by one of the underlying assumptions of general relativity, which holds that there are no privileged frames of reference, and hence no special positions in the universe at all. Therefore, diehard geocentrists can always use this as a fallback position should all else fail. Of course, general relativity also says that the earth holds no special position in the universe, but I don't expect the geocentrists to mention that.
And so things stood for centuries, until better and better observations with more and more precise instruments (such as the telescope) in the 16th and 17th centuries cast some serious doubt on the old-school Ptolemaic model of a static Earth, surrounded by a sun, moon, planets and stars all orbiting in perfect circles and epicycles. Copernicus again proposed a heliocentric model in 1543, but still with perfectly circular orbits and epicycles, because the notion that things are not perfect in heaven was obviously heretical and absurd. Kepler and Galileo, however, showed that the planets traveled in elliptical orbits, that Jupiter had its own moons (i.e. not everything revolved around the earth), and that the moon had craters and mountains (i.e. celestial bodies are not perfect spheres), basically sounding a death knell for the Aristotelean model of the cosmos.
Unfortunately, since the Catholic Church had embraced that model for so long, change was a little slow in coming. Tycho Brahe proposed his own model, wherein the planets revolved around the sun, and the sun, moon and stars revolved around the earth; this was a sort of compromise between the geocentric dictates of the Church and the increasingly heliocentric bent of practicing astronomers (all of whom, by the way, were devout Christians). Unfortunately, since the Tychonian model still relied on circular orbits, it got discarded (including by Brahe himself) after Kepler showed that elliptical orbits better explained Brahe's own data. 3 Newton's theory of gravity, whch provided an elegant solution to the question of why the planets move in elliptical orbits, was just icing on the cake.
Even given all this, the debate raged on for two more centuries, until telescopes got good enough for Friedrich Bessel to observe stellar parallax in 1838 That is the same stellar parallax, mentioned above, whose lack of visibility was the main argument against heliocentrism. The heliocentric model predicted it, and two thousand years later, it was confirmed by observation. Among astronomers at least, that pretty much closed the case.
In the 20th century, however, there has been a religiously motivated attempt by some Biblical literalists to revive geocentrism (and its even more radical cousin, geostatism - the idea that the earth does not move in any way) in the form of the neo-Tychonian model of the universe. This model modifies Brahe's original by allowing elliptical orbits and having the stars as well as the planets revolve around the sun, with the sun and its satellites (everything else in the universe besides the moon) revolving around the earth, which remains perfectly stationary in the center. Such a view requires a denial of a long laundry list of items: most of contemporary astronomy, both Newtonian and Einsteinian mechanics (especially gravity as a force that guides celestial motion), the Coriolis force, the existence of interplanetary space probes, and so on. It also requires a mechanism for why the sun, moon and stars move as the neo-Tychonians say they do (why do the stars orbit the sun, while the sun orbits the earth?) All of this to defend a Church that does not require its members to believe in geocentrism.
Sungenis will hardly convince any astronomers, and probably not very many laypersons anymore (unless one is willing to believe that the entire space probe program is a massive hoax). However, as long as said laypersons don't think too hard about what they'd have to reject in order to embrace geostatism and geocentrism, Sungenis can plant far and wide the seeds of doubt about heliocentrism, and by extension, science in general. That's because most people haven't really come to grips with the fact that all empirical truths are contingent, not necessary, and that absolute certainty is impossible. All scientific knowledge consists of theories -- our collective best guess at present -- not indisputable "facts", and can be revised, or discarded, at any time if strong enough contradictory evidence arises. However -- and this is where the religiously motivated revisionists fall flat -- we must be honest and fair, and not defend a theory just because it's our favorite one. As Richard Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool."
Footnotes:
1 "[In] 1741... Benedict XIV bid the Holy Office grant an imprimatur to the first edition of the Complete Works of Galileo, Copernican heliocentrism and all, a fact conveniently omitted by Robert Sungenis when he claims that accepting heliocentrism substantially undercuts Church authority.
2 "Often Occam’s razor is used to refute Revelation, reasoning that heliocentrism is more ‘intellectually satisfying’ and intrinsically beautiful than geostatism, that the simpler of theories is preferred.... Occam’s razor seems innocuous, especially in its subjective appeal to an abstract concept of ‘beauty’. Who is to decide what is beautiful? It’s actually demonic, as is evident in its subtlety.... Revelation is always primary, always the trump card of truth. Only when this trump is used up, can appeal be made to such as Occam’s principle." -- CAI
3 I seem to recall reading that Kepler fudged the numbers slightly in order to better fit the elliptical orbit model, but happened to push them in the right direction (Brahe's data set was slightly inaccurate to begin with, owing to the imprecision of the instruments available at that time). Later observations have proved Kepler's laws of planetary motion to be basically correct.
Further Reading (That I have not yet read):
De Labore Solis: Airy's Failure Reconsidered, by Walter van de Kamp, is a book-length elaboration of the neo-Tychonian argument, if anyone is interested.
"Lessons of the Galileo Case," Origins, vol. 22, no. 22 (12 Nov 1992). Pope John Paul II's address to the Pontifical Academy of Science, 31 Oct 1992.