Galileo came to see Aristotelian physical theology as limiting scientific inquiry. Galileo wrote an open letter on the irrelevance of biblical passages in scientific arguments, holding that interpretation of the Bible should be adapted to increasing knowledge and that no scientific position should ever be made an article of faith. Had the church followed his advice, they would have avoided numerous embarassments, yet, it would have been at the cost of loosening their iron grip on running all facets of life. (Theocracies - or government by the church was the modus operandi at this time.)

In 1589 as a professor of mathematics at Pisa, he is reported to have shown his students the error of Aristotle's belief that speed of fall is proportional to weight, by dropping two objects of different weight simultaneously from the Leaning Tower. With one simple experiment, years of rational arguments were discarded as the trash that they always were.

But Galileo's greatest work would come after the discovery of the telescope, one of the greatest scientific advances in history. Galileo first won over the government to the value of telescopes by pointing out an their military value; with a telescope, you could spot war ships two hours earlier than you could with unaided eyesight.

However, Galileo soon found a scientific use for this military device. He turned his telescope up towards the stars, and immediately saw his own solar system in ways that destroyed christian mythology. He could see that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system, and that the earth must therefore, move.

Galileo supported the Copernican view that the earth revolves around the sun, again attacking the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic assumption that planets circle a fixed earth. Again, he confirmed his postulation with empirical observations that debunked Aristotle's contention of perfectly spherical bodies in the heavens and that nothing new could ever appear there. And unlike his Christian opponents, he did it in a manner that ALL were free to examine. However, most refused to look through his telescope and the others who did rejected what they saw.

It was Galileo who laid the foundations of Newton's physics. A main contribution was noting the relativity of perception, which harkened back to the Greeks. Galileo also contributed the concept of circular inertia, the correct law of free fall and the parabolic analysis of projectile motion, which all represented much needed corrections of the rational arguments of Aristotle. Above all he made his physics thoroughly mathematical- -although primitive in comparison to Descartes and Newton--Galileo's most important contribution was in idealizing situations onto frictionless surfaces and air free spaces. The philosophical consequences of Galileo were enormous. He developed a near modern understanding of the role of experiment in science; and furthered understanding of causality, perception, ontology, and epistemology. He should be seen a the key "transitional" figure forging the break between the old and the modern.

Galileo's Psychology

Galileo made a sharp distinction between objective and subjective reality. Primary qualities are absolute, measurable and directly knowable. Secondary qualities, (hot, cold, taste) are relative psychological experiences that have no physical counterpart, are not studiable. These statements are more controversial than they may seem at first, because they imply that human sensation is inferior to empirical measurement! Therefore, not only was Galileo saying that faith taught us nothing about the world, he was also saying that even our own senses could not be trusted in most cases. This harkens back to the sophists, but in a manner that shows how legitimate their points were.

Galileo's most valuable scientific contribution was his founding of physics on precise measurements rather than on metaphysical principles and formal logic. Galileo's lifelong struggle to free scientific inquiry from restriction by philosophical and theological interference stands beyond science. Both philosophy professors and dogmatic theologians linked Galileo's science with heresy, a crime that was not righted until October 1992 a papal commission acknowledged the Vatican's error. Because of their blunder, Galileo was compelled to live out the rest of his life under house arrest.

Personal assessment: ***** One of the greatest human beings in history.

If you would like to learn more about Galileo, why not go to this site? Galileo Project a very in depth site about Galileo.

How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which today we deem but fables?
- Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), French essayist. Essays, bk. 1, ch. 26, "It Is Folly to Refer Truth or Falsehood to Our Sufficiency" (1580-88; tr. by John Florio).