Patterns of engagement
The Galileo affair offers an opportunity to study diverse patterns of engagement between science and religion that can be illustrated as follows on the basis of a chart: Let S be a scientific proposition founded in experience or reason (“« Any material entity results from an anterior material cause »
”); let R be a religious proposition founded in a text given as “« revealed »
” by Jews and Christians ("« Look upon heaven and earth [...] and consider that God made them out of nothing” »
, 2 Mac 7: 28); and let O be the overlap of both positions (“« Has the universe always existed? »
”) problems only arise when S and R contradict each other.
1: O is not within the purview of R, therefore (Galileo in 1615)
1' : O is not within the purview o S', therefore R (Galileo in 1615)
Both these solutions are set forth by Galileo in his Letter to Christina of Lorraine: where Salvation is concerned, that is, for instance, in the dogma of the resurrection of the bodies, the Revelation's assertions must have the advantage (1'); but wherever Salvation is not concerned, Reason must take precedence (1).
2: R carries more weight, therefore S must be treated as a hypothesis
This is Bellarmini's solution in 1616 and Pope Urban VIII's in 1624: in the face of Revelation, they downgrade heliocentrism treated as an interesting but hypothetical model
2' : S has the upper hand thus R must be considered a metaphor
This is the traditional solution, which has notably been applied for biblical formulations too conspicuously resistant to literal understanding (“« the Lord God is an everlasting Rock »
”, « “the bosom of Abraham” »
). It is also the solution Galileo put forward in 1632.
3 : S is too persuasive therefore R is false
That is how the Holy Office's inquisitors read Galileo and what they censured him for in 1633: if he upheld the heliocentric system, he perforce denied the biblical account.
3' : R caries more weight, therefore S is false
That is the solution chosen in 1633 by the inquisitorial censors who on account of the biblical account ended up banning the teaching of the heliocentric system.
These six possible solutions arise from three recognisable patterns of engagement:
1 and 1' – non-aggression: the scopes of science and religion (or indeed of two diverging scientific theories such as Euclidian geometry[1] describing micro-space and the Theory of Relativity[2] describing macro-space) are kept apart.
2 and 2' – coexistence: this model is known as instrumentalist or conventionalist because, depending on context, it may deem acceptable to use as an instrument either of the models without this determining the validity of either (the wave theory[3] and the corpuscular theory[4] are both used to explain different light phenomena)
3 and 3' – exclusion: we have here the “realist” solutions: there can be only one reality and truth; accordingly the choice of one of two models in a particular issue is understood as an out and out rejection of the other (this is for instance the case in the debates around the “selfish gene[5]” : it has to be either the genes or the individuals that seek to gain the upper hand in Evolution.
