How Did Galileo Galilei Impact The World

During the seventeenth century, the scientific revolution in Europe was at its peak, changing people’s lives through the new techniques of the scientific method. Citizens of western civilizations had previously used religion as the lens through which they perceived their beliefs and customs in their communities. Before the scientific revolution, science and religion were intertwined, and people were taught to accept religious laws and doctrines without questioning; the Church was the ultimate authority on how the world worked. However, during this revolution, scientists were inspired to learn and understand the laws of the universe had created, a noble and controversial move toward truth seeking. The famous scientists of the time, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, were known to be natural philosophers, intending to reveal God’s mystery and understand (through proof) the majesty of God. Throughout previous centuries, people had hypothesized how the world and natural phenomenon may work, and new Protestant ideals demanded constant interrogation and examination. Nevertheless, some of these revelations went against the Church’s teachings and authority. If people believed the Church could be wrong, then they could question everything around them, as well. As a result, the introduction of the scientific method, a process by which scientists discovered and proved new theories, was revolutionary because it distinguished what could be proved as real from what was simply

Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution provides a comprehensive breakdown of the discoveries that defined the Scientific Revolution and the history behind them. The story of the scientific revolution truly begins with a separation between the Catholic Church and the denizens of Europe brought on by the Protestant Reformation. This separation led directly to the questioning of the church and what they deemed to be true. The growing suspicion of the church applied not only to the politics and religious views but the scientific “facts” the church was built upon. The suspicion of these scientific facts quickly grew to an open challenging of these facts, The Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution is something we have all studied in our grade school years and the discoveries of people such as Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei are well documented and arguably common knowledge but Jardine’s book Ingenious Pursuits encapsulates the scientific revolution in a new light. Jardine accomplishes this by telling the stories of some of the greatest achievements of the Scientific Revolution. These stories reveal the collaborations of some of histories most brilliant minds as well as the secrecy amongst them and uncover the motives that fueled many of these accomplishments.

Scientists and scholars such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Rene Descartes, and Francis dedicated their lives to scientific progress. Even though much of their careers were spent on improving human understanding of the world, many of their discoveries, due to their aberrative nature, faced challenges from third parties such as the Church. During the period between 1550 and 1750, they, alongside many other scholars, fueled the Scientific Revolution, introduced new perceptions of the universe and mankind to all levels of society, restructured long believed religious views, philosophical ideas, and thus lay the foundation to a new European perspective.

This uproar fuelled studying of ancient languages and the bible. What resulted was the new fact that the bible was written by many people, at many different times (Hab). These studies suggested that man, only to give himself a feeling of belongingness in the world created religion. This brought up major questions and many doubts in faith to Christians and the Jewish. As well as more legitimacy to the "Origin of Species" which proved scientifically many faults and untruths in the bible.

Another important figure in the Scientific Revolution was Galileo Galilei. He was an Italian born professor of mathematics who had a great interest in the workings of the universe. Galileo served as a professor at the University of Padua, and it was during this time that he began to question the accuracy of the Churches representation of the world. Galileo’s approach towards knowledge was much different then the afore mentioned Copernicus. Where as Copernicus presented his finding to the mercy of the church, Galileo wrote his conclusions and left the Roman Catholic Church interpret them as they chose. The very nature of his findings pitted him as an opponent of the church.

He also made some of the first observations of nature with long-lasting implications for physics (biography.com). He is known for developing the telescope and stood by the Copernican theory, which is based on a sun-centered solar system where the planets revolve around the sun (biography.com). Galileo’s biggest issue was supporting Copernican’s theory, because it went against society (biography.com). Society once thought that the Earth was flat and they thought that the sun revolved around us. When Galileo went against that, people looked down upon him. Galileo did conform so he could make life easier (biography.com). “Church reaction against the book was swift, and Galileo was summoned to Rome. The Inquisition proceedings lasted from September 1632 to July 1633. During most of this time, Galileo was treated with respect and never imprisoned. However, in a final attempt to break him, Galileo was threatened with torture, and he finally admitted he had supported Copernican theory, but privately held that his statements were correct. He was convicted of heresy and spent his remaining years under house arrest (biography.com).”

All of these amazing discoveries were not without incidences and consequences. During the renaissance, the philosophy of Humanism wanted people to question authority and to examine the world around them. Along with this came a change from the passive life to being active in the world around them (General Characteristics of the Renaissance). People were to take part in every aspect of life, publicly, religiously and politically. With the down fall of feudalism, city states and monarchies came to power. With each came a language and a culture of their own, loyalty to Rome and the pope became secondary. This was the founding of the countries of Europe (Guisepi). Martin Luther disagreed with the belief held by the Catholic Church that only through the church could one be saved. By challenging the Catholic Church, Luther started a chain reaction that saw the split from the church and the formation of the Protestant reformation (General Characteristics of the Renaissance). The church battled for power and by attacking the very nonconformist that Humanism had fostered. Galileo and Luther were both branded as heretics (Staff). This resulted in a division between secular and spiritual

Copernicus discovery was a revelation and it undermined the system of hierarchy in the universe that gave order to the world, which was central to the Christian faith. (7) It was believed that God had created the universe for man, and that he had given the central position in his creation to man, giving people a profound sense of security however Copernicus theory took away man’s central position in the universe. (7) The new scientific discoveries were detrimental to authority as they fostered doubt uncertainty, anxiety and threated belief in the faith (*), however the full implications of these discoveries were not fully understood by people during the scientific revolution. The enlightenment further built on this decreasing belief in political and religious authority, and an increasing belief in the power through human reason (8). Critical reason was believed to be able to be used to combat both ignorance and tyranny. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) viewed the enlightenment as man emerging from a self-imposed state of immaturity. He believed that with critical reasoning man would be enlightened with the truth, further building on the discoveries of the scientific revolution, the enlightenment enabled was the start of people questioning, what they believed with critical reason. The so called age of reason’ targeted religion and the old way of Aristotelian logic.(8) The discoveries of the scientific

Scientifically, Galileo will be remembered for invention of the telescope, which allowed astronomers, sailors and other view the heavens and seas, which fed their own theories. He used his own invention to discover the four moons of Jupiter, the mountains and craters of the moon, and sunspots. His work on falling objects led to gravitational studies and mathematical theorems which are on a basic level, physics. Experimentation was used as a means to prove the laws of science along with the mathematical theories. Math, according to Galileo, was the only infallible form of logic. If a mathematical law could be formed from an event, then it was a logical, rational event. His breaking from the Catholic Church, voicing his findings and staying with his convictions broke the traditional way of thinking that the Church was the end all and be all of all things. In the end, he was proven right for most of his beliefs and vindicated for his suppression.

Galileo played a major role in the scientific revolution and earned the moniker "The Father of Modern Science."

Galileo’s work affected the development of science in his creative thinking. As stated in my first site “Galileo's contribution to our understanding of the universe was significant not only in his discoveries, but in the methods he developed and the use of mathematics to prove them.” Adding on to this quote Galileo used his knowledge of mathematics and incorporate it into his scientific work. Using mathematics in science was a major advancement to technology of the modern day.

The Scientific Revolution changed the way people looked at the world. New ideas and inventions altered the way people lived. Galileo Galilei was a major contributor to the Scientific Revolution. His thoughts and actions contradicted the Catholic Church’s teachings. By challenging the Church, he changed the way people thought about the Church and their own lives.

There are lots of intriguing information about NASA’s space probe, Galileo. Galileo’s mission was a very valuable. The results of the mission have been very beneficial to NASA. The technology of the spacecraft was phenomenal.

“That moment when the Church excommunicates you for being right.” In 1564 on February 15th in Pisa, Italy, Galileo Galilei was born. Throughout his life he had numerous accomplishments including being the first person to study the sky with a telescope, which led to numerous other astronomically astronomical discoveries. If he would not have existed we may never have uncovered many of the truths about space and astronomy. Galileo Galilei was a man of thought and curiosity, these characteristics led him to be one the most well known and influential scientists in the world today.

The scientific revolution was one of the greatest times in the 16th century and its ideals have proved to last to this very day. The great minds of the scientific revolution brought forth new concepts and vastly complex while each one is rooted in a basic fundamental. Some of these ideas and fundamentals were of the outside world, aka space, the planet and the stars, motion, and physics. One of the best minds of this time was, of course, Galileo Galilei. This great astronomer was a marvel at his work, he introduced controversial concepts that the church did not accept but those that he believed were to be true. Written by Galileo himself, this letter to the Grand Duchess professed his great discoveries and how they changed old ideas and