Galilean Irony

Galileo’s 17th Century assertion of the heretical concept of a heliocentric solar system in which the Earth was demonstrably proven not to be the center of the Universe is a boilerplate example of the extent to which a culture (and its associated religious and political systems of power) can be constitutionally unable to accept a new and observationally justifiable conceptual framework. While the punishment of lifetime house arrest afforded to Galileo is in retrospect a clear travesty of justice and a profound failure of intellectual flexibility in the religious administration of his time, it also failed to divert the course of history from the eventual wide acceptance and celebration of his ideas. There is a subtext to this particular case of the abuse of political and religious power in that it remains a substantial irony that the persecution and death of the original proponent of the ideas which became the Christian faith followed a similar trajectory of denial, persecution and eventual acceptance and of which the Roman Catholic Church as a primary beneficiary also maintains a direct line of descendence and heredity of power and wealth from the Emperors of Rome.