Galileo Observation

Science: Observation taken to a whole new level

Through the observations and studies of Galileo, Newton, and Kepler we know much more about the universe today then ever has been known. In their time, these astronomers were revolutionary in their ideas about the cosmos and about science in general. They went above and beyond what it means to be a scientist and began to propose new ideas about the universe not caring whether they were proven right away or not. I imagine all they thought about was how amazing everything that they saw was.

Galileo was truly a revolutionary man in all of his discoveries and ways of thinking. In Galileo’s time the view of the cosmos was that the earth was at the center of the universe. It was the, I guess, relatively

easy way of looking at the sky. It made a lot of sense to put the earth at the center of the universe.

With the naked eye you could see the Sun, Moon and Stars travel across the sky. With the knowledge of the earth being round this idea made sense. What Galileo did was use the telescope to view the universe. This changed everything because he no longer saw just stars. He saw stars that behaved different then all of the other stars. When Galileo published all of his findings he really defined what it meant to be a scientist. He took previous knowledge from other astronomers before him and expounded on it to explain it. He was a really big part of the scientific revolution. Galileo showed us how to observe the universe and expand our minds and consider other ideas about the universe that are different than ours. He showed us how if we come together with all of our knowledge we can learn a lot from each other and maybe explain

each other’s ideas. Galileo journeyed into the unknown realm of the cosmos, if you will, without fear. Soon after Galileo published his results he caught a lot of flack from the Catholic church. However, his discoveries were so big and drastic that nobody could leave them alone and other curious people started really to study and observe the universe. It was also drastic because a lot more people could understand and relate to his findings since all he was doing was just reporting on his findings, not doing a whole bunch of calculations.
Before Galileo, Kepler was the revolutionary, but in his life it was in mathematics. What he did before Galileo was study other people’s observations. He tried to provide a proof of the copernican model of the sun at the center of the solar system. This was never attempted before merely because the idea, to a lot of people, seemed absurd. Kepler proposed something different than copernicus however. He said that the planets rotated the sun in an elliptical manner. Through his gift in mathematics Kepler modified Copernicas’ views about the universe. This again shows us how to study the universe. Take a hypotheses and observe things, make calculations, and then modify and then see if your new prediction is correct with what you see. Kepler also expanded his views just like Galileo and was determined to provide a proof for Copernicas’ hypothesis. It wasn’t till Isaac Newton that his ideas were able to be explained in some way.
Isaac Newton was both a Galileo and a Kepler.

He had the gift of mathematics and observation. Through his study at Cambridge university, his fellow students sparked his interest in nature and the cosmos and he was compelled to come up with an explanation of why things happen the way they do. Through his law of gravitation he was able to explain why the planets travel in their elliptical manner and speed up when they are closer to the sun and slow down when they are farther away. Newton, under the inspiration of Kepler’s and Galileo’s hypotheses conducted his own thoughtful and careful experiments. He realized that there was a method to studying the universe and the idea that observations needed to be made before anything was explained and then calculations could be done on those observations. He showed mankind how to explain things when you didn’t even know what you were

explaining.
These scientists truly embody the scientific method. Galileo, Kepler and Isaac Newton were not afraid of being wrong and making mistakes. They knew they would learn from their mistakes and it would help them come up with better experiments if they got things wrong. Through their example scientists today can study nature and the cosmos in a whole different light. Through sacrifice and bravery they were determined to explain things and expound upon unproven theories.