Galileo Observation

Zac O’Neal
Honors IT 03

Throughout the readings that we have completed so far this semester, I have had a number of things surprise me. I would have to say that the thing that I encountered that surprised me most came about while reading about many of these big name historical figures’ lifes. With Descartes, reading about his work with fencing and about his life decisions, such as the decision to become a philosopher, which was a step down on the social ladder for him, or his time in Holland was fascinating. However, the thing that probably took me back most was reading about the more social aspect of Galileo life. The reason that the social aspect of Galileo’s life surprised me so much was that I never really thought of any of these big
name historical figures such as Galileo and Descartes as anything more than what they were at face value. I knew some basic things about them, but for me in the most basic sense, Galileo was just the guy who invented the telescope and saw the moon clearer than those before him. After reading about all the more fine details of his life, I came to the rather simple realization that was a real person, a person with real ambitions and struggles. In the example of Galileo, I was fascinated as I read to find that he started out in a position as someone who would never have been expected to achieve the feats that he achieved. He faced a real social life and had to work hard and take advantage of whatever opportunities that he had in order to take that step up on the social ladder to be Cosimo’s philosopher. Then, to read about his frustrations to prove that his work was correct when others began to question all of his work without any evidence to back their dissenting claims. This made me realize that even though these people lived so long ago, they faced many similar emotions and struggles, thus making them much more relatable than they had ever been before. I found this sudden change to my thinking process on the matter to be extremely helpful for me. I realize now that I certainly have a problem with taking things at face value and that I rarely dive much deeper into the subject matter than I need to. I also now recognize that it is deeper down that all the really fascinating things lie. For example, to me, Galileo is now more than the guy who looked through the telescope, he is a dynamic character that struggled with highs and lows, success and failure. This change in thinking, I believe, will change me into a person who is more interested in these kinds of subjects and who is willing to dig a bit deeper. It has done this, by making the subject matter more interesting to me, as it is more relatable to my life and experiences. I also feel that as a result of the material being more interesting and relatable, I will absorb more information that is similar to this going forwards. The last way in which this realization was helpful to me was that it made me look introspectively for things that I could improve about myself. For example, reading about Galileo’s life and his failed attempts to get into the Medici court, and how he used every opportunity that he could and worked hard to elevate himself on the social ladder made me consider how I go about my life and ask myself if I try to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to me. I feel that this little revelation that I came across while reading about Galileo life and through his letters could be useful to many others, and perhaps already has been. For example, while I was reading one of my friends stopped by to see what I was up to, when I told him that I was reading Galileo, he made the instant assumption that the text was going to be extremely scientific and solely about what things all ended up leading to the development of the telescope. When he mentioned this, I realized that I had also gone into the text with a lot of fairly similar preconceived ideas of what the piece was going to be about. When I told him that the readings actually had little to do with this, his face became a bit confused. He asked me what it was about if it wasn’t about the telescope, and when I told him about the keenness with which Galileo had used the Medici moons to convince Cosimo to elevate him and raise his social status, my friend noted aloud that he had never really thought to look much deeper than what was on the surface with Galileo. Thus, I obviously think that my friend could benefit further from reading more of this kind of stuff, and I actually did recommend to him that he consider checking out and reading further into the material. I also feel that the vast majority of the public could probably benefit from reading texts such as these, as at least in my experience, it is not something that is covered in any sort of depth at most levels in the current educational system. Furthermore, the effects of people having this revelation could have a fairly large impact on society as a whole. If everyone could see the relationships between themselves these massive historical figures such as Galileo, it could spark much more interest in studying the historical figures and events of the past, an area that does not have a massive public following in the modern day. Then, with a renewed interest on the past, that would allow us to look upon ourselves in the modern day and perhaps to see some of the flaws that we still have and improve ourselves. There were many assumptions that I held before reading this piece that were challenged and broken by reading the pieces on Galileo.
The obvious assumptions that I held before reading the piece included that I would just be reading the step-by-step development of the telescope; I assumed that the test would be the standard stuff about how Galileo had always had such a fascination with lenses and how that lead to everything that followed happening. I also held belief that Galileo lived a fairly simple life. These are obviously false after doing the reading, and now thinking about it, are just very stupid assumptions to hold in general. Galileo, instead of this simplistic, two dimensional character, is someone who did indeed live a very real life. Another assumption that I held before reading the texts on Galileo was that fairly soon after he released the information that he had discovered, the discoveries would at least be put up open to a decently honest discussion. I was extremely surprised to find that the work he released met with such serious backlash from so many. Reading about the politics surrounding what I would now consider to be such a simple change as accepting the Copernican system and that the moon was indeed not a perfect sphere was extremely surprising to me. The rapid change in the role of the Catholic church, the development of the protestant movement, and the change in ruler after Cosimo died was very interesting as it breathed life and fluidity into a time that I had previously held to be relatively
simplistic.
Overall, I would say that the thing that surprised me most throughout our readings, is the finding out how these figures that I have perhaps previously thought to be relatively static are actually very dynamic characters with lives and goals.