Galileo Essay -- essays research papers

Galileo   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the early seventeenth century, Galileo Galilei began the construction of a device that would transform the scientific world. Galileo did not invent the telescope but his improvements on it made him the most scientifically successful user of this instrument in his time. However, Galileo would not stop at scientific discovery. The father of three successfully marketed the improved instrument to the Senate of Venice and the Grand Duke Cosimo II of Tuscany in hopes of possibly furthering his career. In the telescope’s transitional form, Galileo is able to obtain a salary raise and a permanent position at the University of Padua but he is disappointed with this offer and continues to make improvements on the telescope. He realizes that his ties to Cosimo’s court, he taught the Grand Duke when he was younger, could be used to his advantage. The medium for his objective was The Sidereal Messenger. This treatise gives a direct dedication to Cosimo and his court with the hope that he will gain its favor and â€Å"patronage from the ruler of his native land.† It is also the medium through which he conveys his advocacy of the Copernican system, particularly using his telescopically enhanced observations of the moon’s irregular surface and Jupiter’s moons.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Galileo saw the opportunity to gain a great deal from his telescope from the beginning of its conception. The senate of Venice offered him an increase in salary and a permanent appointment at the University based on Galileo’s first improvement which only magnified objects by ten times . He realized that the telescope could improve his financial situation but he was smart enough to not settle for his first offer. He quickly wrote to the Tuscan court about his discoveries. When Galileo heard that the Grand Duke Cosimo and his three brothers were astonished by his almost supernatural intelligence, he realized that he could use this to his advantage. The brilliant Florentine patrician had ties to Cosimo’s court because he tutored him in math as a child. The courts were also very interested in these dazzling things and wanted them for military purposes . Cosimo’s court did not stray from this generalization and Galileo knew it. It can also be theor ized that this position was much desired and after he attained the posi... ...e fixed stars would have to be at a very large distance from Saturn, the outermost planet of this time, therefore separating the planets from the fixed stars. This supported the Copernican theory. He then goes on to his observations of the moons of Jupiter. In short, he makes almost nightly observations of four heavenly bodies around Jupiter with his telescope and reports that he has found four stars, or Medician planets as he calls them, that travel around Jupiter. This suggests that the Earth is not the only center of motion in the universe and further advocates the Copernican system.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Galileo successfully arranges his observations of the heavenly bodies through a magnifying instrument into an incentive for patronage and a promotion of a revolutionary universal system. He gains the patronage of his former student by dedicating to him his revolutionary work on astronomy while also suggesting that the present universal system is wrong and he can prove it. Although the telescope helped him to observe objects with greater detail than other scientists of his time, it cannot be forgotten that Galileo had a mysterious ability as an observer and scholar.