28
institutions was much lower than that—for example—of the Dominicans or
Franciscans. Nothing justifies the view that the Jesuits were the most closed and
rigorous component of opposition to “progress.” The evidence is quite the opposite.
The role of Cardinal Bellarmine, a Jesuit who was acting on the orders of Pope
Paul V as the point man in the ecclesiastical conflict with Galileo, has made him
appear to be the most decisive advocate of a censorious intervention and a drastic
form of prohibition within science. In fact, given the cultural landscape and the
limits of the situation at the time, his actions were almost the opposite of that. In
subsequent interventions on other issues, such as the atomistic view of matter, the
Society did not have a primary function, although it shared common attitudes.
The above cases allow for a certain clarification. They all relate to fundamental
issues that carry strong implications for cosmology and philosophy but which were
only partially decided conclusively at the time of the interventions. Neither Galileo’s
original theory of planetary motions, which was different from Kepler’s, nor the
atomic theory, nor Cartesian corpuscolarism, was demonstrably “true.” Meanwhile,
the usual critics often fail to consider Jesuit contributions on topics that did not carry
on ontological, cosmological, or epistemological implications: work such as that on
lunar topography did not depend on specific theories about the origin or actual
arrangement of the Sun and the planets.
Another criticism of Jesuit science manifests itself on a strictly statistical level:
there was no Kepler, Newton, Euler, or Linnaeus among the Jesuits. If one defines
as “great” only that research which brings “paradigmatic” changes (in Kuhn’s
sense), and only at the greatest scale, it is almost a tautology to assert that a collective body of scientists who were opposed to changes on that scale should not be
considered as great scientists.
However, even this definition is dubious. “Quality” should also include opening
and cultivating new fields of research. During the seventeenth century, in Italy,
acoustics were almost an exclusive domain of the Jesuits, who also played a role in
physical optics even before Grimaldi, and in the physics of the atmosphere with
authors ranging from Cabeo to Lana Terzi. It should also be remembered that even
very significant scientific results can arise as by-products of research programs that
did not achieve their stated purpose or which today are viewed as certainly incorrect. To give two Jesuit examples: Opus geometricum (1647) by Grégoire de Saint
Vincent was aimed at an impossible goal, to square the circle; in the process, though,
it provided a summary of traditional Euclidean geometry interspersed with some
new results that place it among the preeminent works of geometry of the first half of
the seventeenth century. In pursuit of another impossible goal, the demonstration of
Postulate V of Book I of Euclid (the so-called parallel lines postulate), Girolamo
Saccheri made important steps toward future non-Euclidean geometries.
Another example typically given for the supposed mediocrity of Jesuit science is
their production of large works encompassing entire fields of knowledge. The usual
complaint is that these were just cumulative aggregations of heterogeneous curiosities, rather than deep and authentic research. Thus, Torricelli could write with great
sarcasm about G.B. Riccioli’s work on astronomy and cosmology some years before
it was published, ignoring the fact that, actually, Riccioli could be credited among
U. Baldini
institutions was much lower than that—for example—of the Dominicans or
Franciscans. Nothing justifies the view that the Jesuits were the most closed and
rigorous component of opposition to “progress.” The evidence is quite the opposite.
The role of Cardinal Bellarmine, a Jesuit who was acting on the orders of Pope
Paul V as the point man in the ecclesiastical conflict with Galileo, has made him
appear to be the most decisive advocate of a censorious intervention and a drastic
form of prohibition within science. In fact, given the cultural landscape and the
limits of the situation at the time, his actions were almost the opposite of that. In
subsequent interventions on other issues, such as the atomistic view of matter, the
Society did not have a primary function, although it shared common attitudes.
The above cases allow for a certain clarification. They all relate to fundamental
issues that carry strong implications for cosmology and philosophy but which were
only partially decided conclusively at the time of the interventions. Neither Galileo’s
original theory of planetary motions, which was different from Kepler’s, nor the
atomic theory, nor Cartesian corpuscolarism, was demonstrably “true.” Meanwhile,
the usual critics often fail to consider Jesuit contributions on topics that did not carry
on ontological, cosmological, or epistemological implications: work such as that on
lunar topography did not depend on specific theories about the origin or actual
arrangement of the Sun and the planets.
Another criticism of Jesuit science manifests itself on a strictly statistical level:
there was no Kepler, Newton, Euler, or Linnaeus among the Jesuits. If one defines
as “great” only that research which brings “paradigmatic” changes (in Kuhn’s
sense), and only at the greatest scale, it is almost a tautology to assert that a collective body of scientists who were opposed to changes on that scale should not be
considered as great scientists.
However, even this definition is dubious. “Quality” should also include opening
and cultivating new fields of research. During the seventeenth century, in Italy,
acoustics were almost an exclusive domain of the Jesuits, who also played a role in
physical optics even before Grimaldi, and in the physics of the atmosphere with
authors ranging from Cabeo to Lana Terzi. It should also be remembered that even
very significant scientific results can arise as by-products of research programs that
did not achieve their stated purpose or which today are viewed as certainly incorrect. To give two Jesuit examples: Opus geometricum (1647) by Grégoire de Saint
Vincent was aimed at an impossible goal, to square the circle; in the process, though,
it provided a summary of traditional Euclidean geometry interspersed with some
new results that place it among the preeminent works of geometry of the first half of
the seventeenth century. In pursuit of another impossible goal, the demonstration of
Postulate V of Book I of Euclid (the so-called parallel lines postulate), Girolamo
Saccheri made important steps toward future non-Euclidean geometries.
Another example typically given for the supposed mediocrity of Jesuit science is
their production of large works encompassing entire fields of knowledge. The usual
complaint is that these were just cumulative aggregations of heterogeneous curiosities, rather than deep and authentic research. Thus, Torricelli could write with great
sarcasm about G.B. Riccioli’s work on astronomy and cosmology some years before
it was published, ignoring the fact that, actually, Riccioli could be credited among
U. Baldini