Galileo's ideas were amazing. They changed the way people think and live. At the time they were published the fixed belief was that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. The Sun and all the other planets orbited the Earth on their own path on spheres and the stars had fixed points on a sphere surrounding all this. Looking through one of the first telescopes invented, Galileo discovered Jupiter's moons, the rings around Saturn, sunspots, and the phases of Venus, similar to the Moon's. He realised that the only way the planet could have phases was if it orbited the Sun, as the Sun's light had to reflect off it while it was at different points in its orbit, giving it phases. The same must happen to the Moon. Therefore, the whole of the Solar System, not just Venus, had to orbit the Sun or everything would be thrown into confusion and all the principal laws of the Universe would be in disarray. This, of course, was Earth-shattering news. Galileo was forced, on pain of death, to explain that all his ideas were wrong and to apologise, but now we realise that he was absolutely right.
However, this lesson could be applied to modern scientific advances too. For example, genetically modified foods. Some people are worried about the effect they may have if eaten by humans and therefore are against them, and others strongly approve of them as they would be bigger, drought resistant, frost resistant, insect resistant, and generally more practical crops. For example, there is a little plant that is extremely resistant to drought which grows in the deserts of Africa. Some scientists are working on introducing the drought resistant genes from it into ordinary crops like maize, so that if the rains fail, people in developing countries can still have food when the rains do finally come as the maize will simply come back to life. It may be that this will be very advantageous and that everyone who is against GM foods is wrong, or it may be that the scientists are wrong and GM foods are in actual fact bad for the health. We cannot know yet, but so far, nothing major has happened either way.
However, the main problem would be that of cross-pollination. If weeds were to become resistant to all kinds of weedkillers, it would be almost impossible to get rid of them. The health issue may not be as great a problem as we make it out to be, but being so concerned with it, we sometimes overlook bigger issues. Is it right or wrong to tamper with what God made? This is what people say we are essentially doing, which is exactly what happened in Galileo's time.
Mary-Anne Taube
December 9, 1999.
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