Didn’t Galileo show us? Truth is not found in authority and obedience
We have surely learned by now that fact is found in challenging the status quo, in seeking ‘heretical’ knowledge
It is not often I am stirred from my office chair in order to respond to what I read in our daily paper. Today, however, is one of those rare occasions upon which something has so incensed my moral and reasoning faculties as to warrant the effort.
On the Sept. 27 Comments page, I read the letter of Father Geoffrey Korz, entitled Religious Belief and the Search for the Truth. What Korz has advocated however, is utterly at odds with any rational search for it; authority is not a basis upon which one can be assured of any proposition’s truthfulness — no matter how much one might like it to be otherwise.
Take, as but one illustration of the falsity of Korz’s proposition, the trial of Galileo. In 1615 Galileo, the famed inventor and improver of telescopic devices, sat in utter terror as he awaited the Catholic Inquisition’s ruling that would determine his fate. Charged as a heretic for providing evidence and promoting the idea of a heliocentric universe, Galileo’s life hung in the balance. Chief censors of the central committee of the Catholic Church had sought, some 60 years earlier, to ban these “heretical” ideas — now the Church’s official doctrine (its Truth) was being “attacked” again by a rather reputable, if perhaps all too quiet, Italian inventor.
At the time it was remarked by many that not only was it “official doctrine” that the Earth was the centre of the universe, but that all of the holy texts agreed upon this Fact: The sun went ’round the earth, not the other way around. This was the Truth the authorities sanctioned — and if one questioned this Fact, one did so at one’s peril.
Today, thank goodness, most people understand as a matter of empirical evidence that Truth does not emanate from authority by virtue of its superior position, but rather because it just happens, in any particular case, to be right. Or, to put it more bluntly, we understand that simply saying one is right — coupled with the power to compel obedience — does not make that person correct; it just makes him or her an authority, and a pompous one at that.
And, just as it would be rather bold to charge Galileo with “intellectual laziness” for not having swallowed his Church’s geocentric beliefs whole, I think Korz’s charge that Catholics ought to toe the line or seek out the nearest door is — at the very least — a bit unfortunate. “Love it or leave it” is not the way a democracy works and it’s certainly not the way to better institutions such as the Church.
It is precisely this type of command-style micromanagement of official Facts and Truths that leads to the amplification of error, not its eradication. It silences innovation and discovery, stifles constructive criticism and prejudges new ideas as “wrong,” out of hand. These features, all of which are central to the discovery of Truth, are lost when authority is substituted for the hard work of rational inquiry — lonely and as persecuted a job as that may be.
This is all to say, of course, that if the Church really is interested in the search for Truth, it would do well to stop persecuting those who seek out knowledge and challenge the status quo. Institutions, just as often as people, get things wrong — often wildly so.
If, on the other hand, the Church is really interested in dictating what Facts and Truths are to be believed, well then, full steam ahead.
T. David Marshall lives in Cayuga and is a lawyer in Hamilton.
On the Sept. 27 Comments page, I read the letter of Father Geoffrey Korz, entitled Religious Belief and the Search for the Truth. What Korz has advocated however, is utterly at odds with any rational search for it; authority is not a basis upon which one can be assured of any proposition’s truthfulness — no matter how much one might like it to be otherwise.
Take, as but one illustration of the falsity of Korz’s proposition, the trial of Galileo. In 1615 Galileo, the famed inventor and improver of telescopic devices, sat in utter terror as he awaited the Catholic Inquisition’s ruling that would determine his fate. Charged as a heretic for providing evidence and promoting the idea of a heliocentric universe, Galileo’s life hung in the balance. Chief censors of the central committee of the Catholic Church had sought, some 60 years earlier, to ban these “heretical” ideas — now the Church’s official doctrine (its Truth) was being “attacked” again by a rather reputable, if perhaps all too quiet, Italian inventor.
At the time it was remarked by many that not only was it “official doctrine” that the Earth was the centre of the universe, but that all of the holy texts agreed upon this Fact: The sun went ’round the earth, not the other way around. This was the Truth the authorities sanctioned — and if one questioned this Fact, one did so at one’s peril.
Today, thank goodness, most people understand as a matter of empirical evidence that Truth does not emanate from authority by virtue of its superior position, but rather because it just happens, in any particular case, to be right. Or, to put it more bluntly, we understand that simply saying one is right — coupled with the power to compel obedience — does not make that person correct; it just makes him or her an authority, and a pompous one at that.
And, just as it would be rather bold to charge Galileo with “intellectual laziness” for not having swallowed his Church’s geocentric beliefs whole, I think Korz’s charge that Catholics ought to toe the line or seek out the nearest door is — at the very least — a bit unfortunate. “Love it or leave it” is not the way a democracy works and it’s certainly not the way to better institutions such as the Church.
It is precisely this type of command-style micromanagement of official Facts and Truths that leads to the amplification of error, not its eradication. It silences innovation and discovery, stifles constructive criticism and prejudges new ideas as “wrong,” out of hand. These features, all of which are central to the discovery of Truth, are lost when authority is substituted for the hard work of rational inquiry — lonely and as persecuted a job as that may be.
This is all to say, of course, that if the Church really is interested in the search for Truth, it would do well to stop persecuting those who seek out knowledge and challenge the status quo. Institutions, just as often as people, get things wrong — often wildly so.
If, on the other hand, the Church is really interested in dictating what Facts and Truths are to be believed, well then, full steam ahead.
T. David Marshall lives in Cayuga and is a lawyer in Hamilton.
