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Galileo and the Inquisition
At the time the trend toward a theory of relativity, however, could not fully unfold because the various aspects of the problem were not yet sufficiently clarified by philosophical analysis.
These various aspects are (1) the objectivity of science, its "truth" that is rooted in its method; (2) the empirical view of the world that results from the application of the method to the partial phenomena of the external world; and (3) the speculative interpretation of the cosmos that expresses the relation of man to the totality of his world experience.
In the physics of the seventeenth century these elements still formed an undifferentiated compound. The speculative element was not yet completely eliminated from the method, and, as a consequence, the empirical results carried implications that properly belonged to the speculative sphere.
This historically inevitable, but nevertheless unfortunate, transitional state of the problem led to the much misunderstood conflict of Galileo with the Inquisition. The crucial question concerned the kind of "truth" that should be attributed to the Copernican system.
Cardinal Bellarmine suggested a solution to Galileo that substantially was the solution that Leibniz advanced in the previously mentioned memorandum. Galileo admitted that it was not the same thing to show that with the Copernican hypothesis phenomenal problems could be solved, and to prove that the hypothesis was true in nature. Nevertheless, he continues, a system is false if it does not account for all the phenomena, and a system is true if it accounts for them in the most satisfactory manner. "For one cannot and must not search for a higher truth in a proposition of science than that it accounts for all the particular phenomena."47
The situation is both fascinating and revealing: the representative of the Inquisition is willing to settle for relativity, but the physicist has absolutist hesitations.
The reasons of Galileo's hesitation are clear. They are contained in his formulation that one must not look for a higher truth in a proposition than its adequacy for the interpretation of phenomena. He has understood that the truth of science rests in the objectivity of its method. The Copernican interpretation is, therefore, "true" because it accounts for the phenomena in the most satisfactory manner.
Moreover, he is quite right in his enunciation that one must not look for a higher truth in a scientific proposition. The adequacy of interpretation is all the truth there is in science, and hence the Copernican theory is true, while the Ptolemaic is false.
What he is apparently not able to grasp (and in this respect he is the forerunner of generations of physicists) is the possibility that the interpretation of nature cannot be exhausted by a science of phenomena.
