Message #73045

[Bianca]

                 



                                                   

                 PISA

                 THE HOUSE WHERE GALILEO WAS BORN








So who was Galileo really and why was the church court so upset about his claims? He was born near Pisa, on February 15, 1564. Although he wasn't overly radical in his views he was inclined to 'march to his own drummer' a trait evidently inherited from his father Vincenzo Galilei. After an elementary education he entered the University of Pisa in 1581 to study medicine. He didn't graduate, however, and in 1585 he left the university having studied mostly philosophy and mathematics instead.

After university he pursued an interest he had developed in natural motions and the behavior of bodies of water. It was the latter that got him going on his book on tides but I'm getting ahead of myself. In spite of not having earned a degree, Galileo did manage to get a teaching post at his old alma mater in 1589 but by 1592 that career path came to an abrupt end because he had the audacity to challenge one of the fundamental teachings of an old Greek, named Aristotle.

Aristotle's beliefs and principles had achieved the status of divine writ in the Christian Church which was especially ironic since he lived and died over 300 years before the birth of Christ in pagan Greece.

How this came about is a subject for another piece but getting back to our story, Galileo was inclined to doubt at least one of his assertions namely that objects of different weights fall to earth at different rates of speed.

He was interested in motion, remember.