Galileo Galilei's Accomplishments

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The Scientific Revolution and the subsequent Enlightenment were major steps in the progress of mankind. Due to the changes from that era, people nowadays generally enjoy longer, healthier lives, a higher standard of living, better medical care and more individual freedom. There were several key influential individuals of that era, who were 17th century philosophers, including Descartes, Locke, and Newton, and its prominent exponents include Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith. The Enlightenment refers to the European movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries that heavily promoted individualism, and reason against tradition and religion, otherwise known as secularism. Galileo Galilei and Rene Descartes were significant figures during this era, thus; this essay will explore the significance of their findings in the development of how people understand the world today. Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa, Italy on February 15th 1564, was revolutionary an inventor who lived during the 16th and 17th centuries. He made several significant contributions to the fields of philosophy, astronomy, physics, mathematics and cosmology. He was known for his development and invention of the telescope, …show more content…

But perhaps his most famous invention was the telescope. Galileo made his first telescope in 1609, modeled after telescopes produced in other parts of Europe that could magnify objects three times. He created a telescope later that same year that could magnify objects twenty times. With this telescope, he was able to look at the moon, discover the four satellites of Jupiter, observe a supernova, verify the phases of Venus, and discover sunspots. His discoveries proved the Copernican system which states that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun. Prior to the Copernican system, it was held that the universe was geocentric, meaning the sun revolved around the

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