Galileo's Accomplishments

In summer of 1609, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) pointed his revolutionary astronomical telescope to the heavens under the starry Venetian sky; his greatly important observations unveiled the mysteries of universe and would end up changing the course of scientific thought forever. Galileo lived in an age where there was much status quo, when scientists and philosophers would accept scientific and religious doctrine that had stood for hundreds, if not thousands, of years instead of challenging the accepted knowledge in favor of intellectual progress. Galileo’s scientific methods lead to significant discoveries explaining key scientific laws, such as the

Galileo was responsible for the creation of modern science becoming a discipline and its concepts and method a whole philosophical system. Galileo’s contributions involved using a telescope to examine space, inventing the microscope, disproving Aristotles laws, inventing the law of the pendulum, advocating the relativity of motion, and creating a mathematical physics. However one of his most important contributions was the fact that he conducted experiments, thus making him the first experimental scientist. Testing ideas with experiments was not a conventional approach in Galileo’s years therefore he revolutionized the way which science was conducted. Some of Galileo’s most important contributions to science include building a telescope of his own from scratch without ever seeing one in 1609. The observations that Galileo made through his telescope gave evidence that Earth is not the center of all things and that the planets orbited the Sun. Among his findings were the moons of Jupiter, the fact that the Moon’s surface was rough and covered in mountains and craters, the complete cycle of phases of Venus, and sunspots. Galileo observed the changing appearance of sunspots and concluded that the Sun rotates once per month around an axis that is perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. These observations supported the Copernican model but rejected the philosophy of Aristotle.

Galileo was born in Florence, Italy in 1564 to a poor family but among their people they were considered quite noble. His parents realized that Galileo possessed pronounced intellectual gifts. They made great sacrifices to give Galileo the education that he deserved. At the University of Pisa he studied medicine to grant his father’s wishes, while there he became interested in a wide range of other subjects. Even as a student at the University of Pisa he questioned many of Aristotle’s teachings, therefor, when he began to teach there himself he was left isolated from his fellow professor. Galileo worked at the University of Pisa for three years before he resigned and began his teachings as a math professor at the University of Padua. At that university he was a well-loved professor who attracted large

Galileo Galilei was a very influential and controversial astronomer, scientist, mathematician, teacher, and physicist. His life began in the sixteenth century and ended in the seventeenth, in which he penned several books that supported the Copernican theory of a heliocentric solar system. In the words of Drake S. (1957) “... the works of Galileo are well written, and throw light upon the origins of modern science…”(Pg. 2) Although Galileo was soon deemed a heretic by the Roman Catholic church, he continued diligently challenging Aristotelian thought and doctrine and expressing his support of the Copernican theory. As he continued to make discoveries that supported this theory, the church continued to label him as a heretic, and eventually

Galileo’s use of the telescope in 1609 revolutionized the field of astronomy because his observations disproved the geocentric theory and provided strong evidence for the Copernican/Heliocentric system. Galileo discovered four satellites orbiting Jupiter; this observation contradicted the geocentric theory by proving that it is possible for objects to orbit something other than Earth. His observation of the phases of Venus supported the heliocentric theory because he discovered they were similar to the Moon’s phases (from thin crescent to full) which would not be possible if Venus orbited the Earth as it would never pass behind the Sun. Further, he observed that Venus changed size which would be expected if it was orbiting the sun as predicted by the Copernican system.

Galileo was the first European to make systematic observations of the heavens through his improved invention of the telescope. Through his telescope, Galileo made a series of discoveries. Galileo’s observations demolished among the traditional cosmology of what the universe seemed to be composed of. Not only did Galileo make astonishing discoveries, but he was also offered a new position from Grand Duke Cain II of Florence, as his court mathematician. During this time, Galileo was told that he could continue to discuss Copernicanism, as long as he would maintain everything as mathematical supposition, and not as facts. Due to the Inquisitions response, the church attacked the Copernican system since it threaten the Scripture and its’ entire conception of the universe. The new system rose'd much uncertainty that seemed as prudent to simply condemn it. In 1633, Galileo was found guilty of teaching the condemned Copernican system and was then forced to be placed under house arrest. He spent the remaining eight years of life studying mechanics. The principal of motion was the one of the problems that fell under the heading of mechanics. At the end, Galileo made two contributions to the problem of motion. He demonstrated by experimenting uniform force to accelerate

While Galileo holds little respect for those who take Aristotle’s theories at face value, he shows no lack of respect for the great philosopher himself. Galileo applauds the fact that Aristotle’s works are examined and closely studied, and “only blame(s) submitting to him in such a way that one blindly subscribes to all his assertions and accepts them as unquestionable dictates” (200). Galileo’s arguments for heliocentrism would convince any layman of their truth, but his opponents are so set in their ways that they would be unwilling to even listen to his concepts. When an opponent relies on ancient words and does not use ration to come to their beliefs, it is impossible to use ration to convince them otherwise. Galileo, in his effort to contest what his opponents consider incontestable,

Galileo was accused twice of heresy by the church for his beliefs. He remained under house arrest the remaining years of his life.

In fifteenth eighty eight Galileo had applied for the job of teaching mathematics at the University of Bologna but he was later unsuccessful. His reputation was, however, increasing by a lot, and later that same year, he was asked to deliver two important lectures to the Florentine Academy, which was a very prestigious literary group. He also found some theorems on centers of gravity that brought him a lot of recognition among his fellow mathematicians and the patronage of Guidobaldo del Monte who lived from fifteenth forty five to sixteenth seven. He was also a nobleman and author of several important works on the field of mechanics. As a

Galileo Galilei, best known for his advances in astronomy (specifically, his improvements of the telescope), has also invented and improved many other commonly known items, such as the pendulum clock and the thermometer.

Galileo’s findings from his telescopic observations were revolutionary because he showed that the heavens were not perfect.

During the time of Galileo, the church was very strict with physicists who believed in the Copernican model. This is exactly the position that Galileo found himself in. In 1600 Galileo began making his own telescope. He became the first person to point one at the night sky. What staggered him the most by doing this was the sheer volume of stars that were not visible with the naked eye. Galileo used his telescope to make many discoveries; one of these is the discovery of Jupiter’s four moons. He even plotted and tracked there rotations around Jupiter. The main thing however, was that Jupiter even had moons, this was proof that the geocentric model was incorrect and that this discovery was in favour of the Copernican model.

At the age of six, his family moved from Pisa to Florence where he attended the Florentine Academy of Art and Design (“Medici: Godfather of the Renaissance”). When he was finally of age to attend University, he moved back to Pisa and went to the University of Pisa. While he was at the University of Pisa, Galileo made his groundbreaking discoveries of how to accurately keep time. With the new power of accurately keeping track of time, Galileo was able to create the first pendulum clocks. Although he did not get his degree from the University of Pisa, he still became ultra-successful in the fields of physics and astronomy. His second major discovery was in physics, it was a discovery that proved Aristotle wrong. Aristotle was a physicist and philosopher who hypothesized that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. Galileo discovered that was not a correct assertion; objects of different weights fall at equal rates. A common myth is that Galileo did his revolutionary research by dropping balls of different

“Men who were grounded in astronomical and physical science were persuaded as soon as they received my first message…” (30). Others took longer to come to terms with Galileo’s work due to how different it was from what they had come to believe. And, some were so stuck in their ways that they refused to look at the evidence and denied the truth at all cost.

Prior to Galileo’s time, the Greek and medieval mind, science was a kind of formalism, a means of coordinating data, which had no bearing on the ultimate reality of things. The point was to give order to complicated data, and all that mattered was the hypothesis that was simplest to understand and most convenient. Astronomy and mathematics were regarded as the playthings of intellectuals. They were accounted as having neither philosophical nor theological relevance. There was genuine puzzlement among Churchmen that they had to get involved in a quarrel over planetary orbits.