-tofRuttiTiLE Libra 1 " 



NEW YORK. 

 THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JUNE, 1892. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



XVI. THE KETREAT OF THEOLOGY IN THE GALILEO CASE. 

 By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL.D., L. H. D., 



EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



ANY history of the victory of astronomical science over the- 

 - ology would be incomplete without some account of the 

 retreat made by the Church from all its former positions in the 

 Galileo case. 



The retreat of the Protestant theologians was not difficult. A 

 little skillful warping of Scripture, and a little skillful use of that 

 time-honored phrase attributed to Cardinal Baronius, that the 

 Bible is given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but how men 

 go to heaven, sufficed. 



But in the older Church it was far less easy. The retreat of 

 the sacro-scientific army of Church apologists lasted through two 

 centuries. 



In spite of all that has been said by these apologists, there no 

 longer remains the shadow of a doubt that the papal infallibility 

 was committed fully and irrevocably against the double revolu- 

 tion of the earth. As the documents of Galileo's trial now pub- 

 lished show, Paul V pushed on with all his might the condemna- 

 tion of Galileo in 1616, and the condemnation in that same year 

 of the works of Copernicus and all others teaching the motion of 

 the earth around its own axis and around the sun. So, too, in the 

 condemnation of Galileo in 1633, and in all the proceedings which 

 led up to it and which followed it, Urban VIII was the central 

 figure. Without his sanction no action could have been taken. 



True, the Pope did not formally sign the degree against the 

 Copernican theory then; but this came later: in 1664 Alexander 

 VII prefixed to the Index containing the condemnations of the 



VOL. XLI. 13 



