Galileo

Abstract

GALILEO is universally known as the first to direct the telescope to the heavens, with resulting discoveries of prime importance: as being, with our William Gilbert, the founder of modern experimental physics: as the outstanding defender and developer of the Copernican system, which made the sun, rather than the earth, the centre of the planetary system: as the founder of the science of mechanics and, in particular, of particle dynamics. Besides his wonderful genius for scientific discovery by observation and experiment, which led to the replacement of the authority of the ancients by the methods of modern science, he had a notable gift which was the source of all his troubles: he was a master in the art of polemic and welcomed controversy, which Newton so conspicuously shunned.