Galileo Galilei

Throughout history, many people have had good impacts on the lives of others around them. Few men, though, can say that they’ve greatly impacted the entire world in a positive manner. Galileo Galilei is one of these men. Not only did he challenge the ideologies that people had just blindly accepted for years at the time, but he can be seen as one of the (if not the) most central figures of the 17th century scientific revolution. This period contained a number of shocking developments that conflicted with the views society had held regarding the universe--and more specifically, the Earth around them--for over a millennium.

“I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him” (qtd. in “Nothing But the Facts About Galileo Galilei”). This was the adage that Galileo lived by. He consistently made it his purpose to understand and decipher the world for himself, and there was not a single person in the world that he was incapable of learning something from. During his youth, Galileo’s father had wanted him to study medicine in order to make a profitable living; at this urging, Galileo attended a medical university, but almost failed and ended up leaving without a degree. During his time at the university, however, he did make his first (and one of his most important) discoveries. He found that the period of each swing of a pendulum was exactly the same. This would come to be known as the law of the pendulum and would provide the basis for the regulation of clocks. A few more of his benefits to society came purely from the fact that he needed money in order to pay his debts. Some examples of what he threw together during these times of need include a rudimentary thermometer and both a military and civilian compas...

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...ut his life, including the ones that had brought him to be incarcerated in his own home in the first place (Pettinger).

And so while the good of Galileo may seem rather subtle and irrelevant to most of us and not nearly as direct and blatant as that of others in history, the impression he laid on humanity is not to be downplayed in any way. There’s a reason he is known as “the father of modern physics/astronomy.” Had Galileo not been such a diligent character with the determination to help society truly understand the world, many other great minds who may not have been quite as brave as to oppose the Church as he was could potentially not have ever shared their works and wouldn't even be a part of history as it’s known today. Without them and Galileo, there’s no telling where technology and science would be and what conceivably could be lacking in this modern age.