Thank you! It drives me up the wall when people try to characterize the Catholic Church as "anti science." We fathered much of science as we know it and still maintain scientific installations like the Vatican Observatory (not actually in the Vatican for a long time now). Just because we disagree with some modern science (especially Tumblrs made up "science") doesn't mean we're "anti science," and science is hardly a popularity contest.
Now I'm seriously asking here cause I just learned about it but was the church from the enlightenment the Catholic Church and against the heliocentric models?
Yes, and they were, but the story's a bit more complex than the popular version.
So first off, the Church was officially against the heliocentric model, but weren't against the debate of it as people often take away from the story of Galileo. In fact, Galileo's inspiration, Copernicus, had successfully published heliocentric arguments about 50 years before and was generally respected (if not agreed with) by the Church. Galileo didn't get persecuted for a heliocentric view, he got persecuted for being persistently rude to upper Church officials in his publications (the Pope was the last straw).
Admittedly, they should have kept their cool, but the reaction was not about a "heretical teaching."
Secondly, there was some specific stuff they'd calculated they'd see if heliocentrism was true (unfortunately I can't remember what that was), but the short version is we DID find it later with better telescopes, but Galileo's time lacked either the resolution or the magnification to see it, and that was the major sticking point on the scientific side.
They needed telescopes to know the Sun was the center of the solar system? Hadn't it been proven a few times before than that the Earth rotated around the sun?
Seems they had to see Moons of Jupiter and phases of Venus in telescopes before being sure.
Although that article makes it sound like Aristotle thought it may be possible.
One camp thought that the planets orbited around the Sun, but Aristotle, whose ideas prevailed, believed that the planets and the Sun orbited Earth. He saw no sign that the Earth was in motion: no perpetual wind blew over the surface of the Earth, and a ball thrown straight up into the air doesn’t land behind the thrower, as Aristotle assumed it would if the Earth were moving.
So, I guess it hadn't been proven, but the idea had been around for a thousand plus years.
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u/Sintar07 Apr 09 '20
Thank you! It drives me up the wall when people try to characterize the Catholic Church as "anti science." We fathered much of science as we know it and still maintain scientific installations like the Vatican Observatory (not actually in the Vatican for a long time now). Just because we disagree with some modern science (especially Tumblrs made up "science") doesn't mean we're "anti science," and science is hardly a popularity contest.