The Sleepwalkers (222 page)

Canon
Koppernigk's
book
remained
on
the
Index
for
exactly
four
years.
In
1620
the
"corrections"
were
published
and
turned
out
to
be
of
the
trifling
nature
predicted
by
Galileo.
^†
They
were
designed
by
the
same
Cardinal
Gaetani
who,
together
with
the
future
Urban
VIII,
had
carried
the
day
against
the
angry
Paul
V.
From
then
onward,
any
Catholic
publisher
was
free
to
reprint
the
Book
of
Revolutions
–
but
no
Catholic,
or
Protestant,
publisher
felt
moved
to
do
so
for
another
three
hundred
years.
The
surviving
copies
of
the
first
edition
of
1543
had
become
treasured
collectors'
pieces.
The
book
itself
had
become,
apart
from
being
unreadable,
a
mere
curiosity
and
completely
out
of
date
–
owing
to
Tycho's
observations,
Kepler's
discoveries,
and
the
revelations
of
the
telescope.
Copernicanism
was
a
slogan,
but
not
a
defendable
system
of
astronomy.

To
sum
up:
the
temporary
suspension
of
Copernicus'
book
had
no
ill
effects
on
the
progress
of
science;
but
it
injected
a
poison
into
the
climate
of
our
culture
which
is
still
there.

It
would,
of
course,
be
naive
to
believe
that
the
Church
objected
to
the
Copernican
system
only,
or
even
mainly,
because
it
seemed
to
disagree
with
the
miracle
of
Joshua
or
other
scriptural
passages.
The
Council
of
Trent
had
decreed
that
"petulant
minds
must
be
restrained
from
interpreting
Scripture
against
the
authority
of
tradition
in
matters
that
pertain
to
faith
and
morals";
but
the
"petulant
minds"
at
which
this
was
aimed
were
the
Lutherans,
and
not
mathematicians
like
Copernicus,
whose
book
had
been
published
two
years
before
the
Council
assembled,
and
twenty
years
before
it
ended.
The
real
danger
of
removing
the
earth
from
the
centre
of
the
universe
went
much
deeper;
it
undermined
the
whole
structure
of
medieval
cosmology.

Bellarmine
had
once
said
in
a
sermon:
"Men
are
so
like
frogs.
They
go
open-mouthed
for
the
lure
of
things
which
do
not
concern
them,
and
that
wily
angler,
the
Devil,
knows
how
to
capture
multitudes
of
them."
⁴⁶
The
people
in
Rome
were
indeed
beginning
to
discuss
questions
such
as
whether
other
planets
were
inhabited;
and
if
so,
could
their
inhabitants
descend
from
Adam?
And
if
the
earth
is
a
planet,
it
needs,
like
the
other
planets,
an
angel
to
move
it;
but
where
is
he?
They
were
interpreting
the
messages
of
Science
in
the
same
fundamentalist
and
frogmouthed
way
as
the
theologians
were
interpreting
Faith.
But
Christianity
had,
in
the
past,
overcome
similar
crises;
it
had
digested
the
rotundity
of
the
earth
and
the
existence
of
the
antipodes
in
replacement
of
the
tabernacular
universe
covered
by
the
Upper
Waters.
The
Christian
world-view
had
progressed
from
Lactantius
and
Augustine
to
the
medieval
cosmos
of
Aquinas
and
Albert
the
Great;
and
beyond
that,
to
Bishop
Cusa's
first
intimations
of
infinity,
to
the
Franciscans'
post-Aristotelian
physics,
and
the
Jesuits'
post-Ptolemaic
astronomy.

But
it
had
been
a
gradual
and
continuous
progress.
The
walled-in
universe,
the
hierarchy
of
the
Great
Chain
of
Being
could
not
be
given
up
lightly,
before
some
equally
coherent
vision
of
the
world
could
take
its
place.
And
that
vision
did,
as
yet,
not
exist;
it
could
only
take
shape
when
the
Newtonian
synthesis
provided
a
new
focus
for
the
eye.
Under
the
circumstances,
the
only
possible
policy
was
one
of
ordered
retreat;
to
yield
positions
when
they
became
untenable
–
such
as
the
immutability
of
the
sky,
disproved
by
novae
,
comets
and
sunspots,
and
the
earth
as
centre
of
all
heavenly
motions,
disproved
by
the
moons
of
Jupiter.
In
all
these
"dangerous
innovations"
astronomers
of
the
Jesuit
Order,
of
which
Bellarmine
was
the
General,
had
played
a
prominent
part.
They
had
quietly
abandoned
Ptolemy,
and
progressed
to
the
Tychonic
system:
the
planets
circle
the
sun,
and
with
the
sun
the
earth
(just
as
the
four
"Medicean
stars"
circle
Jupiter,
and
with
Jupiter,
the
sun).
This
is
as
far
as
both
metaphysical
prudence
and
scientific
caution
permitted
them
to
go
–
even
if
some
Jesuits
were
Copernicans
at
heart.
The
reasons
for
metaphysical
prudence
were
theological;
the
reasons
for
scientific
caution
empirical:
so
long
as
there
existed
no
observable
stellar
parallax,
no
apparent
displacement
in
the
position
of
the
fixed
stars
caused
by
the
earth's
motion
through
space,
that
motion
remained
unproven.
Under
these
circumstances,
the
system
of
the
universe
which
seemed
to
agree
most
closely
with
observed
fact,
was
the
Tychonic
system.
It
also
had
the
advantage
of
a
compromise;
by
making
the
sun
the
centre
of
planetary
motion,
it
prepared
the
way
for
a
complete
heliocentric
system,
should
a
stellar
parallax
be
found,
or
some
other
discovery
tilt
the
balance
in
its
favour.
But
that,
as
we
shall
see,
was
another
compromise
that
Galileo
rejected.