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Chapter 2

At the end of this chapter the student should be able to:

• describe Jeremy Bentham’s ideas of utilitarianism and

the “greatest happiness,” and his moral calculus;
• Recognize the principles of philosophical approach

GALILEO GALILEI
(1564-1642) is considered the father of modern science and made
major contributions to the fields of physics, astronomy, cosmology,
mathematics and philosophy.

Galileo invented an improved telescope that let him observe and describe
the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus, sunspots
and the rugged lunar surface. His flair for self-promotion earned him
powerful friends among Italy’s ruling elite and enemies among the
Catholic Church’s leaders. Galileo’s advocacy of a heliocentric universe
brought him before religious authorities in 1616 and again in 1633, when
he was forced to recant and placed under house arrest for the rest of
his life.

Galileo’s Early Life, Education and Experiments

Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa in 1564, the first of six

children of Vincenzo Galilei, a musician and scholar. In 1581 he
entered the University of Pisa at age 16 to study medicine, but was
soon sidetracked by mathematics.

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From 1589 to 1610, Galileo was chair of mathematics at the
universities of Pisa and then Padua. During those years he performed
the experiments with falling bodies that made his most significant
contribution to physics.
Galileo had three children with Marina Gamba, whom he never
married: Two daughters, Virginia (Later “Sister Maria Celeste”) and
Livia Galilei, and a son, Vincenzo Gamba. Despite his own later
troubles with the Catholic Church, both of Galileo’s daughters became
nuns in a convent near Florence.

Galileo, Telescopes and the Medici Court

In 1609 Galileo built his first telescope,

improving upon a Dutch design. In January of 1610 he
discovered four new “stars” orbiting Jupiter—the
planet’s four largest moons. He quickly published a
short treatise outlining his discoveries, “Siderius
Nuncius” (“The Starry Messenger”), which also
contained observations of the moon’s surface and
descriptions of a multitude of new stars in the Milky
Way. In an attempt to gain favor with the powerful
grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de Medici, he
suggested Jupiter’s moons be called the “Medician
Stars.”
“The Starry Messenger” made Galileo a celebrity in Italy. Cosimo
II appointed him mathematician and philosopher to the Medicis, offering
him a platform for proclaiming his theories and ridiculing his opponents.
Galileo’s observations contradicted the Aristotelian view of the
universe, then widely accepted by both scientists and theologians. The
moon’s rugged surface went against the idea of heavenly perfection, and
the orbits of the Medician stars violated the geocentric notion that the
heavens revolved around Earth.

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Galileo Galilei’s Trial

In 1616 the Catholic Church placed Nicholas

Copernicus’s “De Revolutionibus,” the first
modern scientific argument for a heliocentric
(sun-centered) universe, on its index of
banned books. Pope Paul V summoned Galileo to
Rome and told him he could no longer support
Copernicus publicly.
In 1632 Galileo published his “Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” which
supposedly presented arguments for both sides of the heliocentrism
debate. His attempt at balance fooled no one, and it especially didn’t
help that his advocate for geocentrism was named “Simplicius.”
Galileo was summoned before the Roman Inquisition in 1633. At
first, he denied that he had advocated heliocentrism, but later he said
he had only done so unintentionally. Galileo was convicted of “vehement
suspicion of heresy” and under threat of torture forced to express sorrow
and curse his errors.
Nearly 70 at the time of his
trial, Galileo lived his last nine
years under comfortable house
arrest, writing a summary of his
early motion experiments that became
his final great scientific work. He
died in Arcetri near Florence, Italy
on January 8, 1642 at age 77 after
suffering from heart palpitations
and a fever.
What Was Galileo Famous For?

Galileo’s laws of motion, made from his measurements that all

bodies accelerate at the same rate regardless of their mass or size,
paved the way for the codification of classical mechanics by Isaac
Newton. Galileo’s heliocentrism (with modifications by Kepler) soon
became accepted scientific fact. His inventions, from compasses and
balances to improved telescopes and microscopes, revolutionized
astronomy and biology. Galilleo discovered craters and mountains on
the moon, the phases of Venus, Jupiter’s moons and the stars of the

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Milky Way. His penchant for thoughtful and inventive experimentation
pushed the scientific method toward its modern form.
In his conflict with the Church, Galileo was also largely
vindicated. Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire used tales of his
trial (often in simplified and exaggerated form) to portray Galileo as
a martyr for objectivity. Recent scholarship suggests Galileo’s actual
trial and punishment were as much a matter of courtly intrigue and
philosophical minutiae as of inherent tension between religion and
science.
In 1744 Galileo’s “Dialogue” was removed from the Church’s list
of banned books, and in the 20th century Popes Pius XII and John Paul
II made official statements of regret for how the Church had treated
Galileo.

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JEREMY BENTHAM

An influential early classical theorist was the British philosopher

Jeremy Bentham, born in 1748. He believed that people have the ability
to choose right from wrong, good from evil. His explanation for criminal
behavior included the idea that people are basically hedonistic, that
is, they desire a high degree of pleasure and avoid pain. People who
choose to commit criminal acts think they stand to gain more than they
risk losing by committing the
Jeremy Bentham was an early crime. Bentham believed that the
classical theorist who based his ideas on criminal justice system should
utilitarianism, felicitious calculus, deter people from making this
and “the greatest happiness.” choice.

UTILITARIANISM
Jeremy Bentham, a major contributor to the classical school of
criminology, based his theories on the principle of utilitarianism.

Bentham’s perspectives on
human behavior had its roots in
Utilitarianism is the doctrine that
the concept of utilitarianism,
the purpose of all actions should be
to bring about the greatest happiness
which assumes that all of a
for the greatest number of people. person’s actions are calculated.
Utilitarianism is the doctrine
that the purpose of all actions should be to bring about the greatest
happiness for the greatest number of people. For Bentham, people
calculate actions in accordance with their likelihood of obtaining
pleasure or pain. Bentham stated that an act possesses utility if it
“tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness (all
this in the present case comes to the same thing) or (which again comes
to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or
unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.”
Bentham developed a felicitous calculus, or moral calculus, for
estimating the probability that a person will engage in a particular
kind of behavior. People, he believed, weigh the possibility that a
particular behavior pattern or action will cause current or future
pleasure against the possibility that it will cause current or future
pain. In response to the question of why a person commits a crime,
Bentham would probably reply that the pleasure that the person
anticipated from the criminal act was much greater than the subsequent
pain that might be expected from it.

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THE GREATEST HAPPINESS AND SOCIAL CONTROL
Bentham advocated the “greatest happiness” principle and the use
of punishment to deter crime.

Bentham expounded a comprehensive code of ethics and placed much emphasis

on the practical problem of decreasing the crime problem. He aimed at a
system of social control—a method of checking the behavior of people
according to the ethical principle of utilitarianism. He believed that
an act should be judged not by an “irrational system of absolutes but
by a supposedly verifiable principle. The principle was that of ‘the
greatest happiness for the greatest number’ or simply ‘the greatest
happiness.’”
For Bentham, checks or sanctions
needed to be attached to criminal
Felicitous calculus is a moral calculus
behavior and set up by
developed by Jeremy Bentham for
estimating the probability that a
legislation, which would then
person will engage in a particular kind serve “to bring the individual’s
of behavior. pursuit of his own happiness in
line with the best interests of
the society as a whole.” Punishment, Bentham believed, was a necessary
evil—necessary to prevent greater evils from being inflicted on the
society and thus diminishing happiness. Social control based on degrees
of punishment that both fit the crime and discourage offending is part
of our system of criminal justice today. As you can see, Jeremy Bentham,
Cesare Beccaria, and the classical school of criminology had many
influences on the American system of criminal justice.

INFLUENCES OF THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL

The U.S. Bill of Rights is rooted in Beccaria’s writings. Beccaria
and Bentham also influenced the development of the modern
correctional system.

Beccaria’s groundbreaking essay strongly influenced the first ten

amendments (the Bill of Rights) to the United States Constitution and
played a significant role in bringing about many of our present-day
penal practices. It was also of primary importance in “paving the way
for penal reform for approximately the last two centuries.” Reviewing
European history, we see that the essay greatly influenced the French
penal code adopted in 1791, Russian law at the time of Catherine the
Great, Austrian law during the reign of Emperor Joseph II, and
Prussian law during the reign of Frederick the Great. By stressing
that the goal of punishment is to deter criminal behavior in people,
Beccaria reflected Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian concepts of free will
and hedonism.

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Both Beccaria and Bentham advocated a new philosophy and a new
system of legal and penal reform. These classical theorists argued
that the proper objective of punishment should be to protect society
and its laws. It was their view that punishment should not be
inflicted for vengeance; rather, the primary purpose of punishment
should be the reduction or deterrence of crime. They advocated that
the excessively brutal punishments of mutilation and death be
abolished and that penal reforms be introduced so that the punishment
fit the crime. Thus, it was their belief that

• the punishments inflicted should be just severe enough to

outweigh any pleasures, either contemplated or actually
experienced, that could be derived from the commission of the
criminal act;
• in this way, the threat of punishment would deter most people
from committing crimes in the first place;
• the actual infliction of punishment would deter an offender from
committing additional criminal acts.

Beccaria also presented convincing arguments for imprisonment as a

form of punishment, saying it would be the most effective and
efficient method for carrying out punishment. As it happened, a more
than adequate number of jails and prisons were already conveniently in
existence throughout Europe. Prior to this time, these buildings were
used for the temporary confinement of minor offenders and those
awaiting trial, and they were easily adapted for use in implementing
Beccaria’s and Bentham’s programs.18 Thus, the classical theorists
influenced the development of the modern correctional system.

References:

• https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/galileo-galilei
• http://www.ablongman.com/html/productinfo/glick/images/61
832_CH03_058-085-r.pdf

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