Three Italian words that mark the birth of modern Science

Galileo Galilei remains one of the most fascinating of early scientific figures, and his life and work have inspired a multitude of historians and critics. His achievements are many. He provided an early account of classical mechanics, and his descriptions of the night sky with a telescope laid the foundation of physical astronomy. But perhaps most significant, Galileo epitomised a new scientific outlook. By his rhetoric, supported by mathematical reasoning, and the force of his personality, Galileo helped establish the Copernican model of the solar system as a revolution in science. Entirely aware of the philosophical implications of his new discoveries, he became a controversial and highly visible figure who was an embarrassment to the authority and dogma of the Catholic Church. Critics have long argued over the nature of his spirit of scientific inquiry; but Galileo’s influence, in historical terms, is enormous.

Galileo Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy, on February 15, 1564, the son of Vincenzio Galilei, a musician and tradesman, and Giula Ammannati. (The first-name repetition of the surname was a Tuscan custom.) His family, which was not wealthy, moved to Florence when he was a child, and Galileo attended a Jesuit monastery school, but after becoming a novice at age fifteen, he was forced to withdraw by his father. In 1581 he entered the University of Pisa, planning to study medicine, but did not like it and acquired a reputation as disputatious. He soon transferred his interest to mathematics and fatter leaving leaving the university in 1585, without a degree, he returned to Florence to teach. In 1592, after the death of his father, he moved to Padua, where he continued teaching and invented, among other things, a military compass. He lived well; he acquired a mistress, Marina Gabba, and, to the distress of his aging mother, sired several illegitimate children.

Galileo’s most significant early work, De motu, concerns the dynamics of motion and reflects his skepticism about the reigning-but crumbling-principles of scholastic science. According to Aristotle, an object in motion requires a constant mover; a ball, for example, is said to be propelled by air pushing behind it. This was a vulnerable point in Aristotelian physics, and it became an early locus of Galileo’s interest. In all probability, Galileo was influenced by ballistics engineers, some of whom realised that a moving bullet appears to be pulled down to earth. Galileo recognised the importance of such observations. Experimenting on his own with a ball rolling off a table, he discovered a general law. Projectiles make a curved path as they fall. And, as a mathematician profoundly influenced by ARCHIMEDES, he summarised this discovery in a simple mathematical formula, described first in a letter dated 1604. (Mistakes in Galileo’s calculations have given rise to considerable speculation among philosophers of science as to his intended line of reasoning.)

A new and important phase in Galileo’s career began in 1609, when he learned of the invention of the telescope. He constructed his own model, which brought objects as much as one thousand times closer than they appeared to the naked eye.

This he trained upon the moon. According to she old science of the cosmos, heavenly bodies were perfect in shape; Galileo found that Earth’s satellite was pockmarked. He saw peaks and valleys that what he thought were seas. Looking out farther into the night sky, he discovered that the Milky Way consisted, so it seemed, of a multitude of stars- a far cry from the pristine night sky of Ptolemaic astronomy.

Indeed, the publication in 1610 of Siderus nunicus (The Starry Messenger) was a sensation; and historian J. R. Ravetz has called the slight book “perhaps the greatest classic ever of popular science, and also a masterpiece of subtle propaganda for the Copernican system.” Learned men everywhere bought and read The Starry Messenger, and within five years there was even an edition in Chinese, translated by a Jesuit. Perhaps the most intriguing and remarkable of Galileo’s discoveries was that four objects seemed to be circling the planet Jupiter, changing their position from night to night. To Galileo these were death satellites and resembled a Copernican scheme in miniature. Perhaps the most intriguing and remarkable of Galileo’s discoveries was that three objects seemed to be circling the planet Jupiter, changing their position from night to night. To Galileo these were death satellites and resembled a Copernican scheme in miniature.

In Cymbeline which is believed to have been written in 1610, the year in which Galileo published his account of his telescopic discoveries, there is an indication that Shakespeare was aware of Galileo’s findings. Jupiter himself appears near the end of the play while a stage direction calls for three ghosts to dance in a circle, which could be an allusion to the three newly discovered moons described by Galileo.

The success of The Starry Messenger put Galileo on the path to further discoveries, as well as on a collision course with the Catholic Church. However he had first of all become a famous man and his 1611 audience with the pope was friendly and encouraging. Soon Galileo acquired a powerful patron in a former student, Cosimo II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who appointed Galileo his chief mathematician and philosopher. In 1612 Galileo’s Discourse on Floating Bodies established hydrostatics, and the following year he published a series of letters in which he discussed his observations of sunspots. Here Galileo explicitly approved of COPERNICUS.

Galileo’s experiment in respect of gravity which was conducted on the leaning Tower of Pisa, has become part of the folklore of science. Whether true or apocryphal it is believed that he dropped two spheres of different masses from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa because he wanted to demonstrate that the objects would fall at the same rate independent of their masses. Indeed, the two spheres hit the ground at the same time, supporting the idea that objects fall at the same rate regardless of their masses. This was again proven to be true years later when the Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott dropped a hammer and a feather from the same height on the Moon and they hit the Moon’s surface simultaneously. Before Galileo’s experiment, Aristotle’s theory of gravity was widely believed, which stated that objects fall at a rate that is proportional to their masses. and made an initial formulation of the principle of inertia. But by now; Galileo had aroused the wrath of church figures, and when in 1616 he visited Rome, he was admonished not to teach Copernicus’s heliocentric views, against which a formal decree was issued. Galileo was not charged with heresy, however, and so may have taken a characteristically optimistic assessment of the situation. The historical record is a source of much debate.

When in 1623 Galileo published The Assay, a polemic concerning the nature of comets, he dedicated it to Urban VIl. the new pope who (as Mateo Barberini) had been an Earth supporter. Galileo hoped that the 1616 decree would be lifted but his patron, Cosimo 11, having died, Galileo was more vulnerable than before. He also received mixed messages from his old friend, who as pope was proving more the militarist than friend to science. However, obtaining permission to discuss the systems of the world so long as he came to the right conclusion, Galileo wrote his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which was published in 1632. In this work, a masterpiece of science, it is hard not to see Galileo’s strong identification with his father, the author of a Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music. Psychologically, this conceivably prevented Galileo from realising the gravity of his undertaking.

The Dialogue was a great success when published in March 1633, but within six months the Inquisitor had stepped in. The Dialogue was banned, and Galileo was soon summoned once again to Rome, where he was technically imprisoned. Galileo’s famous audience with Pope Urban VIII, and his grilling by the Inquisitor, have been the subject of much discussion over the years. The main issue was Galileo’s disobedience of the 1616 admonitions. He has sometimes been taken to task for being less than courageous in face of these trials; in fact, he was a political prisoner, old and ill, and he was literally threatened with torture at a time when heretics were regularly, with cautionary fanfare, burned at the stake. In the end, the church prohibited and consigned the Dialogues to the flames, disgraced Galileo in a grand public spectacle, and refused to make him a martyr. He was imprisoned in fairly congenial circumstances.

It is a testament to Galileo’s personal strength that the church’s condemnation did not finish him by any means. His Discourse on Two New Sciences, published in Leyden in 1634, reprised his earlier experiments and discussed the properties of solids and the motion of falling bodies and projectiles. In 1637 he made his last scientific discovery: the wobbling of the moon.

Although the Dialogues had been banned, it was soon known throughout Protestant Europe. Galileo was visited by the poet John Milton and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and his final letters, in which he professes faith in Aristotelian physics, may be read as ironic. At the end of his life Galileo was blind, apparently from cataracts, and he died on January 9, 1642.

Three and a half centuries after Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II who had served as Archbishop of Cracow and liked to refer to himself as the “Copernican Canon,'” conceded on behalf of the Catholic Church that Galileo had been unjustly treated.

This admission, made in 1992, seems to have had a public relations angle. It was accorded a wry headline in the New York Times: “After 350 Years Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: I Moves.” Three years earlier, in October 1989, the Galileo, a space probe, was launched from the space shuttle Atlantis. In 1995, the probe reached Jupiter, whose four moons Galileo had firs viewed 385 years earlier. It is a testament to Galileo’s personal strength that the church’s condemnation did not finish him by any means. His Discourse on Two New Sciences, published in Leyden in 1634, reprised his earlier experiments and discussed the properties of solids and the motion of falling bodies and projectiles. In 1637 he made his last scientific discovery: the wobbling of the moon.

Although the Dialogues had been banned, it was soon known throughout Protestant Europe. Galileo was visited by John Milton and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and his final letters, in which he professes faith in Aristotelian physics, may be read as ironic.

At the end of his life Galileo was blind, apparently from cataracts, and he died on January 9, 1642.

“Three and a half centuries after Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II who had served as Archbishop of Cracow and liked to refer to himself as the “Copernican Canon,'” conceded on behalf of the Catholic Church that Galileo had been unjustly treated.”

This admission, made in 1992, seems to have had a public relations angle. It was accorded a wry headline in the New York Times: “After 350 Years Vatican Says Galileo Was Right: It Moves.” (The phrase “Eppur si muoves” uttered in Italian expresses just how sure Galileo was of his research and belief that the Earth moves. Though the three words, were only faintly audible, that point in time, when they were uttered marks the beginning of modern Science!

Galileo was the great transitional figure in the history of science, and his work is formalised in that of ISAAC NEWTON !

However, the nature of Galileo’s influence has been the subject of much scholarly debate over the past half century. In 1939 Alexandre Koyré described Galileo’s great importance to science as primarily conceptual and philosophical and downplayed his use of experiment. This ignited considerable interest and led the scholar Stillman Drake to a more recent, painstaking reevaluation of Galileo’s notes and manuscripts. Drake concluded “that a coherent depiction emerges of [Galileo] as a recognisably modem physical scientist” who made pioneering investigations a the nature of gravity.

The success of The Starry Messenger put Galileo on the path to further discoveries, as well as on a collision course with the Catholic Church. However he had first of all become a famous man and his 1611 audience with the pope was friendly and encouraging. Soon Galileo acquired a powerful patron in a former student, Cosimo II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who appointed Galileo his chief mathematician and philosopher.

 In 1612 Galileo’s Discourse on Floating Bodies established hydrostatics, and the following year he published a series of letters in which he discussed his observations of sunspots. Here Galileo explicitly approved of COPERNICUS.

Before Galileo’s experiment in respect of gravity, Aristotle’s erroneous theory, which stated that objects fall at a rate that is proportional to their masses, was widely believed.

Galileo’s experiment was conducted on the leaning Tower of Pisa and has now become part of the folklore of science. Whether true or apocryphal legend has it that he dropped two spheres of different masses from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa because he wanted to demonstrate that the objects would fall at the same rate independent of their masses. Indeed, the two spheres hit the ground at the same time, supporting the idea that objects fall at the same rate regardless of their masses. This was again proven to be true years later when the Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott dropped a hammer and a feather from the same height on the Moon and they hit the Moon’s surface simultaneously.

Galileo had aroused the wrath of church figures, and when he visited Rome, in 1616, he was admonished not to teach Copernicus’s heliocentric views, against which a formal decree was issued. Galileo was not charged with heresy, however, and so may have taken a characteristically optimistic assessment of the situation. The historical record is a source of much debate.

In either event, Galileo remains, together with Johannes Kepler, the most significant figure in the scientific revolution before Newton.