GALILEO – FATHER OF THE MODERN SCIENCE

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 387.

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22. Read and translate the text. There are three logical parts in it. Match the titles to these parts:

A. Galileo's greatest achievements;

B. Galileo's significant contribution to science;

C. Galileo's entirely new ideas.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was the Italian mathematical physicist who discovered the laws of falling bodies and the parabolic motion of projectiles. He was the first to turn the newly invented telescope to the heavens, he was among the earliest observers of sun spots and the phases of Venus. A talented publicist, he helped to popularize the pursuit of science. However, his quarrelsome nature led him into an unfortunate controversy with the Church. His most significant contribution to science was his provision of the alternative to the Aristotelian dynamics. The motion of the earth thus became a conceptual possibility and scientists at last had a genuine criterion for choosing between the hypotheses of N. Copernicus and T. Brahe in the field of astronomy.

Galileo's perhaps greatest achievements were in understanding how things move, which created the basis for the modern science of physics. For about 2000 years, people had accepted the views of Aristotle on how things fall, why things stop and go, and how things get faster and slower – and remained blind to their senses. Galileo overturned Aristotle's apparently common-sense views – and paved the way for Newton's full understanding of force, motion and gravity half a century later.

It was Galileo's insistence on the importance of demonstration, observation and experiment that proved Aristotle to be wrong, and led to insights and proofs of entirely new ideas. Galileo was not alone at the time in looking at things this way. The English thinker Francis Bacon was a pioneer of these methods. However, Galileo put them into practice with such a force and insight, and with such crucial effect, that he deserves to be called the father of modern science.