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The Finite Scope of Empirical Science
While, indeed, there is no more truth in science than he can find in it, there is plenty of truth beyond the science of phenomena. The view of nature that emerges from the application of scientific methods to phenomena certainly is true, but it is the correlate of the methods that have been applied and no more than that.
The problem of the absoluteness of space is not a problem in empirical science, so that the methodical and empirical truth of the Copernican system does not so much as touch it.
Hence the curious distribution of roles in the conflict. Cardinal Bellarmine apparently understood that the absoluteness that was his concern had nothing to do with empirical science; any theory in science was bearable as long as it did not raise claims that would pull the earth from under the feet of man who, indeed, is the center of the world of the religious and metaphysical symbols that he creates.
The interest the church had in the Ptolomaic system did not fundamentally concern its validity as a scientific theory of the planetary world. The religious interest touched the validity of a symbolism that originates in the experience of the human soul and its spiritual destiny as the center of the cosmic drama. Since souls are embodied and the bodies are located on the earth, the cosmos has its symbolic center in the scene of its climactic drama.
The shift of the spatial center becomes an attack on the experience of the spiritual drama if the shift is construed as the displacement of the "real" center in the symbolic sense. While Bellarmine's instinct in these matters was sure, his analysis of the problem did not go far enough to convince Galileo.
His suggestion of a settlement in terms of two hypotheses neither of which would have a bearing on reality reduces the problems of speculation and of science to the same level. It does not differentiate between the realms of religious symbolization and metaphysical speculation on the one side, and the realm of empirical science on the other side.
That the beautiful Copernican theory should be no more than a "hypothesis" could hardly be made palatable to an enthusiastic scientist unless it could be made clear to him at the same time that the function of science for the interpretation of the world is in principle limited.
Galileo in his turn did not differentiate the components of the problem any better than Bellarmine, and, moreover, he was at a disadvantage because he did not even have the cardinal's instinct for the problem. His enthusiasm for the new science, which unfolded its potentialities under his hands and those of his contemporaries, sustained his indulgence in the belief that now a "true" system of the world had been found, and it was destined to supersede the old one.
In this respect again, Galileo is the forerunner of generations of physicists who indulged in the fallacy that the advancement of science could affect the truth of metaphysics and religious symbolization. The error of Galileo, which stands at the beginning of the scientistic movement, is the same error that lies at the bottom of the evolutionist creed movement in the wake of Darwin. 
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NOTES
43. See vol. V, Religion and the Rise of Modernity, chap. 5.
44. See Albert Einstein, Ueber die spezielle und allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, 3d enl. ed. (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1918), §§ 30-32. English edition: Relativity: The Special and General Theory, trans.Robert W. Lawson (New York: Holt, 1920).
45. See Leibniz's letter to Huyghens of June 12/22 1694, in G. W. Leibniz, Haupt-schriften zur Grundlegung der Philosophie, ed. Ernst Cassirer, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Meiner,1903-1915), 1:243 ff. See, in the same volume, Cassirer's introduction to the correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke, 108 ff.
46. For Leibniz's intention in writing the memorandum see his letter to Huyghens of September 4/14, 1696, in ibid., 244 f. The memorandum itself is published in Leibnizens mathematische Schriften, ed. C. L. Gerhardt, 7 vols. (Berlin: Asher, 1848-1863), 6:144 ff. For comment on the question see Cassirer's previously quoted introduction to the Leibniz-Clarke controversy in Haupschriften,109.
47. " 'È vero che non è istesso il nostrare che con la mobilità della terra e stabilità del sole si salvano 1'apparenze, e il dimostrare che tali ipotesi in natura sien real-mente vere, ma è ben altrotanto e più vero, che se con 1'altro sistema communemente ricevuto non si può rendere ragione di tali apparenze quello è indubitamente falso, siccome è chiaro che questo che si accommoda benissimo può esser vero, nè altra maggior verità si può e si deve ricercar in una posizione che il risponder a tutte le particolari apparenze"
(It is true that it is not the same to demonstrate that with the earth's mobility and sun's stability appearances can be saved, and to demonstrate that such hypotheses are really true in nature;however, it is even truer, that since it is impossible to explain such appearances with [the aid of] the commonly received system, that system is unquestionably false; since it is clear that, because this one which accommodates itself very well [to appearances] may be true, no other major truth can and must be sought in a position that can respond to all the particular appearances).
Galileo's letter in Berti, Capernico e le vicende del sistema copernicano in Italia (Rome, 1876), 130; quoted in Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, 3d ed., 3 vols. (Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1922), 1:410. With regard to the historical materials I am following Cassirer in this question; I cannot agree with him, however, with regard to their interpretation.
Revolution and the New Science
History of Political Ideas, Volume VI (CW Vol 24 )
Chapter 3 "The English Quest for the Concrete"
§3. Absolute Space and Relativity
pp 183-189
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