During the Middle Ages, it was assumed that, in order to know truth, one must consult the proper authority in the given subject in which you are striving for truth. Since authority, it was assumed, was derived from God, the Church, considered to be the representation of God on Earth, had the power to decide what was taken as truth and what was taken as falsehood. And, as one can plainly see throughout human history, he who controls truth controls the minds of men. Thus, it came to be that truth was based on Church-sanctioned literature. Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these were the authorities on everything worth knowing. However, if observations tend to point to another truth, different from the one laid out by the Church Doctors, then these observations were either deemed as aberrations or, in many cases, totally forgotten and disregarded as factual material from which to draw any conclusions. Then everything changed with the advent of the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a rebirth of the Greco-Roman Classics, which specifically through light on the works of Plato. These works were charged with ideas based on individualism and the ability of one man, acting on his own thoughts and inspiration, to find truth, whether it is found in the form handed down by the Church as God-sanctioned truth or complete and absolute heresy. It is this intense spirit of rebellion through the scientific method that Bertolt Brecht wishes us to see throughout his play Galileo about the Venetian Renaissance man whose controversial ideas regarding the orbiting of planets forced the Church to make Galileo recant his scientific ideas. However, instead of believing and structuring the belief that truth wins out over faith when the two are directly opposed to one another, Brecht shows us that, even when humans are shown the truth, even when all doubt should be laid aside and knowledge and understanding be taken up by all humanity, we fail miserably to do so because of our corruptibility, our cowardice, and our infinite capacity to misunderstand.
