The Restless Earth

Galileo Galilei , Scientist

I titled this as Galileo Galilei , Scientist . However , Scientist does not seem to be a complete of Galileo . This is because one may also consider Galileo to be a mathematician , a physicist , an astronomer , a philosopher , a publicist and even a renegade . In each of these fields , Galileo has made a significant or seminal contribution Ultimately though , we will see that it is the scientist Galileo which has had the greatest impact on the way we live our lives today

Galileo was born in February 1564 to a musician

father in Pisa Italy . A devout Catholic , he forced his two daughters out of wedlock to pursue the monastic life (Sobel , 2000 . He initially studied medicine but later shifted to studying mathematics at the University of Pisa . Studying under mathematician Ostillio Ricci , Galileo pored over the works of Euclid and Archimedes . His study of mathematics paved the way to a teaching career at various universities even being appointed as the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa . By 1592 , Galileo moved to the University of Padua where he taught geometry , mechanics and astronomy (Connor Robertson , 2002

It was during these times that Galileo began to develop the idea that an idea had to be tested for it to be verified as true or false . He began to realize that his theories regarding the behavior of falling bodies could be verified through the use of inclined planes . He was already laying the grounds for the development of the experiment as well as the scientific method (Connor Robertson , 2002

Through these experiments , Galileo showed that the time for objects to fall to the earth was irrespective of their mass (shown by dropping two balls of different weight from the leaning tower of Pisa . He was also able to figure out that the distance a body moves under uniform acceleration is proportional to the square of the time elapsed (working through his inclined planes ) - an important discovery considering that Galileo came before Newton 's laws of motion (Connor Robertson , 2002

While important achievements at the time , Galileo 's work could be considered moot by the development of Newton 's laws of motion . Indeed his conclusions are not surprising for any student of basic Newtonian mechanics . However , what was important was the way that he arrived at his conclusions - by experimentation . He set out to prove empirically that his ideas were more valid than the prevailing theories of the day Indeed this is Galileo 's important contribution to Western Society Whereas before , philosophy and reasoning was the tool by which concepts about the world were solidified , Galileo wanted to create physically verifiable tests of these ideas . Galileo wanted to put these ideas under the microscope so to speak and see if these ideas could coherently explain well crafted physical phenomena

Another field where Galileo and his scientific made made huge contributions was in the field of Astronomy . While not the inventor of the telescope , Galileo was able to...