Universal Truth

a cantata




Commissioned by Peter Oakes for the Thomas Hardye Singers this recording is the second performance with the Occasional Singers. The soloists are Louise Wayman and Gareth Jones, with Peter directing.

Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo –

[“Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems”
Scientific research officially banned by the Church late in April 1633. Galileo was placed under house arrest for an unlimited period. He died in 1641, having gone blind.]

The text was compiled/written by me, and makes use of sayings of both Galileo and the Catholic Church:

As day follows night
So Galileo was right
One universal truth
Followed another [RB]

In questions of science
The authority of a thousand
Is not worth the humble reasoning
Of a single individual [Galileo]

What would you say of the learned here
Who have steadfastly refused
To cast a glance
Through the telescope
What shall we make of this?
Shall we laugh
Or shall we cry? [A letter written by Galileo in 1610 to Kepler]

I do not feel obliged to believe
that the same God
Who has endowed us with sense
Reason
And intellect
Has intended us
To forgo their use [Galileo]

All truths are easy to understand
Once they are discovered
The point is
To discover them [Gallileo]

Simplico [in the Dialogo the character Simplicius is the defender of the Aristotelian Geocentric view, and Pope Urban VIII took offence, thinking the character referred to him] the holy fool
Found Galileo – the Wrangler –
On his holy Mount
With the Inquisition [the Inquisition trial was held in April 1633] as his tool
Forced him to recant
And thus avoid a burning
The Earth continued turning
And science its learning [RB]

I have never met a man so ignorant
That I couldn't learn something from him [Galileo]

The square-cube law
And Pisa’s cannon-balls
Falling, as everyone saw,
Through the ruins
Of Aristotle’s hallowed halls,
Stood learning on its head [RB]

You can plainly see that if a horse
Were to fall from a height
Of three or four feet
It could break its bones
Whereas a dog
Would not suffer injury

The same applies to a cat
From a height of as much as
Eight or ten feet

To a grasshopper
From the top of a tower

And to an ant
Falling down from the moon

Nature could not allow a horse
To become as big as
Twenty horses
Nor a giant
As big as ten men

Unless she were to change
The proportions of all its members
Particularly the bones

Thus the common assumption
That great and small structures
Are equally tough
Is obviously
Wrong
[From the Discorsi - scientific prose of Gallileo: commonsense observations used to dismiss a common misconception and hints at a rational way ahead. The examples highlight how Aristotle's theories are mistaken.] 

If the Earth is a planet,
And only one among several planets,
It cannot be that any such great things
Have been done specially for it
As the Christian doctrine teaches.
If there are other planets,
Since God makes nothing in vain,
They must be inhabited;
But how can their inhabitants
Be descended
From Adam?
How can they trace back their origin
To Noah's Ark?
How can they have been redeemed
By the Saviour?
[Church scholar Cardinal Bellarmin was chief amongst those demanding Galileo's recantation. This declaration was contemporary Church scholarship.]

Eppur si muove!
And yet it moves!
[Famously uttered by Galileo shortly after his recantation]

I wrote and printed a book
In which I discuss this doctrine
Already condemned,
And adduce arguments of great cogency
In its favour,
Without presenting any solution of these;
And for this cause
I had been pronounced by the Holy Office
To be vehemently suspected
Of heresy,
That is to say,
Of having held and believed
That the sun is the centre of the world
And immovable,
And that the Earth
Is not the centre
And moves:

Eppur si muove!
And yet it moves!

So help me God,
And these His holy Gospels,
Which I touch with my hands.

I, Galileo Galilei,
Have abjured as above
With my own hand
[From Galileo's recantation of his heliocentric ideas, recited at Rome, In the Convent of Minerva, on 22nd June 1633.]

Eppur si muove!
And yet it moves!

New conditions have their impact finally
On religious life itself.
The rise of a critical spirit
Purifies it of a magical view of the world
And of superstitions
That still circulate,
And it exacts a more personal
And explicit
Adherence to faith;
As a result,
Many persons are achieving
A more vivid sense
Of God
[from the Vatican Council, “Gaudium et spes” No.7. This is the Catholic Church's contemporary view of the collaboration of religion and modern science. It was given in an address by Pope John Paul II on November 10th 1979 at the Einstein session of the Pontifical Academy of Science, Vatican City. It was not until 31st October 1992 that Pope John Paul II officially announced that the Church had mishandled the case of Galileo]


Eppur si muove! The old man muttered
And yet it moves! The old earth trembling
On its axis, and briefly, briefly stuttered
Aging certainties quietly dissembling:
As day follows night
And sight becomes blind
So Galileo was right
And sound of mind.
One universal truth
Followed another [RB]