Galileo, Science and the Church..Simplified

Galileo's conflict with the Church is the most common example used in discussions of the church and science. This would be expected; Galileo was an important scientist, and his interactions with the church were quite dramatic. What is striking is how often this episode in history is the only example presented. It is assumed that the Galileo Affair can be both the beginning and end of the discussion. This approach of reducing a complex question to a carefully filtered discussion based on one set of events borrows much from modern soundbite journalism.

Media courses often describe how broadcast news stories are packaged for television: :

avoid or oversimplify any story that is complex.
build a story structure and exclude anything that doesn't contribute to that structure.
there must be conflict
story structure should include a beginning, middle and end.

While soundbite journalism may be entertaining, it is not always enlightening. And it shouldn't be used as a model for discussing history. It is the model used for many discussions of Galileo and the Church. Serious treatments of the history of science span from well before Christ's time to the present day. This means that there should be 2000 years of shared history between the Church and the development of science. Yet so many of the discussions on the church and science restrict themselves to the events over a 33 year period from about 1609 to 1642 relating to one scientist in one part of one country? Galileo soundbites will often follow a boilerplate that focuses on the conflict; ignoring both the important contributions of Galileo's contemporaries in the church and the major scientific problems with Galileo's own work. One documentary that adopts this approach is the NOVA documentary, 'Galileo's Battle for the Heavens' (see Galileo's Battle for the Heaven's).

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