Galileo Vs. Newton

This brief essay is going to touch on how Galileo, Kepler, and Newton challenged classic interpretations of nature as well as the popular sources of knowledge at the time. In the times of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton the ideas, arguments, and contributions each man brought forth were controversial. During these times the popularly held beliefs were the geocentric model of the cosmos as well as the Tychonic system which attempted to bridge the divide between what Tycho Brahe saw as the mathematical benefits of the Copernican system and the philosophical benefits of the Ptolemaic or geocentric system. Galileo helped usher in the transition from the field of natural philosophy to modern science and spurred the scientific revolution. During his

Through his observations of the solar system Galileo confirmed his acceptance of the Copernican model. Although it may be argued that Galileo is remembered mostly for his work on moving objects, his greatest contribution may have been the scientific method. Prior to Galileo scientists would attempt to understand the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ effectively becoming philosophers as well as observers. In Galileo’s view, scientists should follow a path of pure observation rather than also attempting to explain metaphysical aspects of reality, effectively separating science from God and theology. Galileo also worked to quantify science, prior to Galileo, a scientist would only show that something had occurred and somehow tie it to reality, similarly to Ariostotle’s theory that objects fell to earth seeking their natural state. Galileo argued that scientists needed to explain phenomena mathematically using experimentation to prove said phenomena, using mathematics to predict and experimentation to confirm

Perhaps most notably, Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion would go on to lay the foundation of celestial mechanics. Kepler also would correctly discover that planets move in elliptical orbits at varying speeds depending on their distance from the sun. Outside of his contributions to astronomy, Kepler also had significant contributions to optics, with the inverse-square law governing the intensity of light he invented an improved refracting telescope. Kepler would also be the first to publish a document called Mysterium Cosmographicum in defense of the heliocentric model of Copernicus. Although this work was not entirely accurate, it is considered an important contribution to the field of astronomy due to the fact that it eliminated the remaining defects of the Ptolemaic theory from the Copernican system. Using astronomical and planetary observations of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brache, Kepler also analyzed the orbit of Mars and determined that Mars did not move in a perfectly circular orbit around the sun, which was the popularly held belief at the time. He also found that Mars moved faster when it was further away from the sun, leading to the foundation of his second law of planetary motion. After laying the foundation of his second law, Kepler then worked to calculate the entire orbit of Mars using the geometrical rate law while assuming an egg-shaped orbit. After