Science vs. Religion: An Impossible Conflict in the Time of the Galileo Affair

Abstract

This paper analyses the conflict between science and religion related to the Galileo affair. By studying the scientific controversies surrounding the transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism from the perspective of the astronomers, we show that a conflict between science and religion as we understand these disciplines today was impossible in the 17th century. Heliocentrism faced two questions that were difficult to solve in terms of the science of the time: how to explain the movement of the Earth and stellar parallax, which Copernican astronomers explained through divine intervention. Solving fundamental scientific problems was still a question of Theology. The conflict around the Galileo affair arises from a reordering of knowledge: for Galileo, the geometry of planetary movement was the responsibility of Astronomy, but cosmological problems remained within the province of Philosophy and Theology. Galileo’s conflict must be understood more as a power struggle than as a conflict between science and religion. The continued explanation in various fora, the press and nonscholarly journals of the changes generated by the new astronomy (including the Galileo affair) as Theology interfering in science is not grounded in the historical and scientific facts of the 17th century, and profoundly distorts the perception most nonspecialists have of these events.