Some decades after Galileo's death in 1642, the CHURCH permitted a complete republication of Galileo's Dialogue. This was NOT an admission that it had erred, but it was a tacit wink of the eye in favor of the Copernican theory. In 1978 shortly after Pope John Paul
II took office in 1978, he announced that the church should reevaluate the WRONG it had done to Galileo. He felt that a new look at the Galileo trial, WHICH POISONED RELATIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND FAITH, was VITAL! At last, in 1992, three and a half centuries after it sent Galelio to his villa PRISON, the CHURCH declared that what Galelio had done was NO CRIME! "THE ERROR OF THE "THEOLOGIANS" OF THE TIME" noted Pope John Paul II, "WHEN THEY MAINTAINED THE CENTRALITY OF THE EARTH, was to THINK that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the LITERAL SENSE of the scripture."
Stictly speaking, it was not Galileo's discoveries that sparked his troubles, it was the conclusions that Galileo drew from his discoveries. However, INTERPRETATION is an integral part of the discovery process. The most serious consequence ever to have been faced by a discoverer.
One evening in 1993, my cat and I witnessed a space shuttle reentering the atmosphere in a bright train of orange fire that lit up the southern sky. It was so bright that the cat watched the the orange meteor move from west to east across the sky. Can it be said that the cat DISCOVERED the glow in some way? Without any means for the cat to interpret what he saw, I doubt it. At the risk of seeming trite, I contend that if a DISCOVERER does NOTHING with a find, THEN IT IS NOT A DISCOVERY! The cat,(dear Fred), did NOTHING! Galileo first RECORDED his observations, then PUBLISHED them in detail, then used them to SHOW that the earth is not the center of the universe, and finally HE FACED THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS INTERPRETATIONS!
"It is the GLORY OF GOD to conceal a thing: But the HONOUR OF KINGS is to make the DISCOVERY!"
Proverbs 25:2
THE UNIVERSE IS VASTLY LARGER THAN ANYONE CAN EVEN THINK OR COMPREHEND
WE ARE ON THE VERG OF A FLOOD OF WORLD CHANGING DISCOVERIES!!!
BEAM US UP SCOTTY!