Who Was Galileo Galilei? | Hacker News Reader

Who Was Galileo Galilei?

universetoday.com

29 pointsHooke12 comments

Book Recommendation: There's an absolutely stellar book on Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Descartes and several other brilliant people written in a very readable fashion. It's called 'What Galileo Saw' and it's by Lawrence Lipking. Perhaps my favourite book.

Looks awesome. Here's a direct link to AMZ:

http://www.amazon.com/What-Galileo-Saw-Scientific-Revolution...

One thing that baffles me is how the Kindle version is more expensive than a used copy.

>Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy, in 1564

State of Italy did not really exist then. Pisa belonged to Holy roman empire.(?)

I hate this shit. I'd like to know why Galileo from HRM did stuff. And some Joe Smart from Castile didn't. It takes ages to find the relevant states.

I'd like to know why Galileo from HRM did stuff. And some Joe Smart from Castile didn't.

Fair question but one that could apply to almost any historical figure who has done stuff. Most of (us) don't. A few do.

http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/~adrian/images/Galileo_Galilei_2.jp...

My preferred portrait of Galileo. Might give you one answer.

Another answer: There are a shelf-loads of books about Galileo around that go into more detail about the historical setting than the OA which I imagine was aimed at children.

He was the son of a court musician (who may have played in one of the first operas) and therefore had access to powerful people. He was good at his maths and that lead to being a private teacher with rich young aristos as his students, and to his acting as a designer of fortifications (contact with powerful people again). He belonged to a club of people interested in new curiosities and experiments. Networking - a sign of the times. Quite a modern man in many ways.

Contrast his successful PR with that of Johannes Kepler. Much more useful model of the planetary motions, and an insight into the underlying physics. Much less recognition.

I believe Pisa at the time was part of the Duchy of Milan (a constituent state of the HRE) which at the time was under Spanish control (previously under French rule).

Thanks. Lots of post antiquity significant scientific advancements seem to have happened in HRE.

My personal bet is that it has something to do with many lords with conflicting interests(Pope, King of spain(?), emperor and the duke). This left some people unattended and free to experiment all kinds of weird stuff.

Also the Genoa and Venice seem to have played a big role. I think this relates to how they based their economies on naval power, but had strategically very bad positions. So they had to stay ahead in technology. (Byzantine empire on the other hand controlled the most important choke point in European trade at the moment. So they had no such need to innovate.)

> Also the Genoa and Venice seem to have played a big role. I think this relates to how they based their economies on naval power, but had strategically very bad positions. So they had to stay ahead in technology.

If that were the case "Italy" would have taken the place of "Spain" and Portugal at that time regarding seatrade and clearly they didn't neither then nor in the future being almost irrelevant.

"Italy" as in Genoa and Venice we're big players in Mediterranean sea trade from 1100 to about 1600. During that time they developed banking, private companies, big amount of technology and took part in developing scientific method.

Power shifts, Spanish empire got upper hand in Atlantic trade. But they could capitalize on already superior technology of Europe against their colonial vassals. So no such pressure for innovation.

True but Galileo's developments took place after the decline had clearly started. That was my point.

By the 1500s, Italy was only nominally a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Although Emperor Charles V did intervene a lot in Italy, that was more because of the Hapsburg Spanish role in Naples. It's not clear to me whether or not Pisans would have thought themselves members of the HRE.

Also by the same author:

Who was Christiaan Huygens? http://www.universetoday.com/48420/christiaan-huygens/

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