That a prophet is not without honor save in his own country is an often quoted and paraphrased passage from the New Testament (Mark 6:4). Of course, prophets are usually not acknowledged as such until quite awhile after their time. So it is with Galileo Galilei. This past Christmas season, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged the 17th Century physicist and astronomer's work has helped men better understand and "contemplate with gratitude the Lord's works," thus recognizing Galileo as, by definition, a prophet.

It is worth noting that Galileo's "own country" was not Italy - a mere geographic expression until 1870 - but the Roman Church and its client states. The Church was as much a secular and political institution as a religious one from the time of Constantine up into the 19th Century. The Papacy had direct political control over areas of central Italy as well as considerable influence in the Western European states ruled by those who gave their spiritual allegiance to the claimed successor of Simon Peter. But in the 16th Century, Roman Catholicism had been seriously challenged, both in doctrine and in structure, by the Protestant Reformation. The split in Western Christendom culminated in the bloody internecine conflict in the name of opposing versions of the faith known as the Thirty Years War (1618 to 1648). The Galileo controversy occurred in the middle of that warfare was likely a political issue masquerading as a doctrinal one. Galileo's alleged heresy was his espousal, and scientific verification, of the astronomical heliocentric theory set forth by Copernicus. The Church of Rome held that the Copernican theory contradicted the Bible and was thus heretical. The Lutheran astronomer Johann Kepler had independently verified the Copernican theory (with some refinements) at about the same time. Sanctioning Galileo for teaching the Copernican system was an assertion of the Church's authority, which was of critical importance in the midst of a protracted war, particularly where the orthodoxy of Biblical interpretation was an issue.

In his magnum opus Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell asserted that freedom means the freedom to say that two plus two equals four; if that is granted, all else follows. The point is, of course, that freedom to describe reality - to tell it like it is - rather than having to adhere to a fantasy perpetrated by those in power that preserves their status quo is a dangerous thing. If a power structure is dependant upon the unerring truth of a sacred writing, then any deviation calls its authority into question. If authority depends upon the belief of the masses that those in power can control and alter physical reality by dictating the result of a simple arithmetic equation to be different than that which is demonstrably correct and commonly understood, then any assertion otherwise destroys that authority. Of course, we think, in our liberal democratic republic, the notion that the government can define a mathematically principle is patently absurd. Or is it?

During the 1890s, the Indiana legislature made a somewhat comical (or now we might believe) to legislate the value of Pi, the Greek letter that stands for the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of the circle. The ancient geometers of all known civilizations were familiar with the ratio and calculated it by measurement to be approximately 3.15. It is one of those pesky "irrational" numbers - numbers that cannot be expressed by the ratio of two integers - whose value never is absolute but only approximate. Even today, the degree of accuracy for Pi beyond five decimal places (3.14159) hardly matters outside the realm of the highest technology and nuclear or astrophysics. Nevertheless, it is a mathematical and physical reality that cannot be legislated, and it is Orwellian (or Galilean) to make the attempt.

Edwin Goodwin, a physician and amateur mathematician from Indiana, believed that he had discovered a correct way of squaring the circle, and in 1897 sought to introduce a "Bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth and offered as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying any royalties whatever on the same, provided it is accepted and adopted by the official action of the Legislature." The bill did not specifically mention Pi, but the calculations described in it necessarily result in holding Pi is equal to 3.2, and it was referred to at the time as the "Pi Bill." The state House of Representatives actually passed the bill, leaving one to only wonder how many legislators actually understand, or even read, the laws they are enacting. The Indiana Senate, influenced by Purdue University professor Clarence Waldo who perhaps convinced the Senators of the inadvisability, if not the impropriety, of placing their imprimatur on a piece of junk science, postponed action on the bill indefinitely, and it thus died. Interestingly, and perhaps giving a modicum of comfort, the bill provided no explicit penalty for failure to adhere to its commands. Orwell's protagonist, suffered torture and brainwashing, and execution once he had "gotten his mind right." Galileo publically recanted and narrowly escaped burning at the stake, although he was subject to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

Government espousal of scientific hypotheses is always problematic and most often downright dangerous. The recent dire predictions of climate catastrophe as a result of global warming is a case in point. While no one is suggesting that scientists who dissent from the popular and politicized view that human being are causing the death of Earth should be burned at the stake, enactments of laws dictating public policy on the basis that the underlying science is inerrant is an abuse of power. There is unanimity of opinion that average temperatures have risen over the last century; there is not unanimity of scientific opinion that human activity - in the form of carbon dioxide emissions - is causing it. The jury is still out on that question and may well be hung. Even if it turns out to be true, it is unclear what can be done about it short of reducing our present standard of living to the equivalent of Medieval Europe, if not pre-Columbian America. That could not be enforced short of totalitarian government, which the citizenry would not tolerate, one hopes. I leave aside the specter of the inevitable unintended consequences. Governmental meddling in science should be left to encouraging research and protecting the fruits of intellectual labor, and not to dictate a favored orthodoxy, whether it be a geocentric universe, the value of Pi, or the so called "carbon footprint."