Galileo at the Stake

For many years now I’ve been fascinated by the hypocritical gap between what scientists profess, namely that they are open-minded and welcome new hypotheses to test, and their actual attitude in practice, which seems to be that nothing can possibly be true unless and until it is conclusively proven to be true.  All one has to do is watch television programs on the advances of science to realize how many people have lived in utter disgrace within their chosen fields for having done the unthinkable, which is to propose radical new theories.  Many have died before their theories have been proven true and celebrated.

It reminds me of the Byzantine empress who called herself “the Divine Eirene” and had her son blinded (in an example of the Byzantine notion of appropriate punishment) for espousing an idea that she later proclaimed should be the belief of the entire empire.  But that was in Medieval times.

Of course, it was inevitable that Albert Einstein would be the victim of such intolerance.  When he was finally, grudgingly awarded a Nobel Prize, it wasn’t even for his theories of relativity, but rather something on electromagnetism.  One name that keeps coming up in this regard, though, is that of Geoffrey Marcy, whose views on extraterrestrial planets were rejected out of hand to the extent that whenever he mentioned it his colleagues would look down at their shoes in embarrassment.  His graduate students would tell him apologetically that they would like to espouse his ideas, but they knew their careers would go nowhere if they did.  In fact, they probably wouldn’t get a position anywhere to begin with.  It was only when that theory was conclusively proven true that he was reinstated in his field.

There are many more examples of highly intelligent, creative people who have been persecuted by their colleagues for that very intelligence and creativity.  I once mentioned to an astrophysicist acquaintance that it was obvious that any new hypothesis was greeted as being impossible unless and until it was proven correct, and he bristled and kept insisting that it wasn’t true.  When I began to name case after case, he walked away.

Burn, Galileo Galilei, burn.