Professor Acoppola
Lit237
10/27/2014
In the seventeenth century, scientist and philosophers were lacking the instruments to make observations and further their experiments. The seventeenth century was also known as the scientific revolution. During the scientific revolution, philosophers mainly confided in people from the church and the ancient world. Before the scientific revolution, the Europeans were uneducated about science. The knowledge they had was in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. Europeans were influenced by Renaissance scholars. They doubted the church's authority. The church responded with fear. The scientific revolution undermined the power of the church and changed the way people looked at science. Galileo …show more content…
He observes the stars and moons of Jupiter with telescope and soon realized that he can see stars that were not visible to the naked eye. In 1610, Galileo wrote Sidereus Nuncius where he showed his observations. Galileo first discovery was the moons. He discovered that the Moon's surface was not smooth. He wrote, "...it is seen that the Moon is most evidently not at all of an even, smooth and regular surface, as a great many people believe of it and of the other heavenly bodies, but on the contrary it is rough and unequal. In short it is shown to be such that sane reasoning cannot conclude otherwise than that it is full of prominences and cavities similar, but much larger, to the mountains and valleys spread over Earth's surface." (Galilei, 11). He observed the Moon surface was rough, not smooth and mountainous. He observed that the moons had surface similar to mountain and valleys. Galileo pointed his telescope toward Jupiter and made the discovery that there were four stars surrounding it . He later figured out that they weren't stars, they were moons.
There were four moons around Jupiter. Therefore, this meant that everything …show more content…
"For the Galaxy is nothing else than a congeries of innumerable stars distributed in clusters." ( Galilei , 62) . He discovered that it was made up of millions of stars. These stars weren't seen by the naked eye. He called the cluster of stars the Nebula of Orion with around twenty one stars. He also discovered the Nebula of Praesepe, which was made up of around forty stars.(Galilei,63) People were skeptical about Galileo's discoveries. He conflicted with the Church because he had different ideas about the universe. He believed that the sun, not the earth was at the center. The church believed that the earth was still. Galileo questioned the
Church's authority. As a result the Church power was weakened. Robert Hooke published his book Micrographia in 1665. In his book he made observations of organism through his microscope. Robert Hooke became at member of the
Royal society when he was 27.His most famous discovery was his study slices of cork. He was observing cell walls in cork tissue. He names the "cell". Hooke was also the first person discover fossils with the microscope. He noticed the similarity between petrified oak and rotten oak wood. He says "That petrify’d Wood having lain in some place where it was