Galileo's View Of Philosophy Essay

In Galileo’s views of philosophy, he strongly believed in the power of observation and experimentation. This is because reasoning and making sense of the world is not something that can only be accomplished by the reasoning of many philosophers. One person can make all the difference. Aristotelians on the other hand, believe a theory is proved by the amount of “witnesses” or ancient philosophers that subscribe to the theory. This is not true, according to Galileo, because the more perfect the theory the smaller amount of followers it will likely have. A perfect philosophy is focused and can support only a small number of propositions. It may have fewer followers and fewer people researching it, but it is more likely to lead to propositions that can be proven by experimentation. A …show more content…
First, throwing all traditional views on the pyre of science is arrogant and not appropriate. In the middle ages, much knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome was lost which pushed science backward instead of forward for a period of time. The quickest way to advance science is to leap frog over earlier theories. As an example, Galileo accepted Copernicus’ view of a sun-centered universe and used that to build his own view of the universe. The second objection relates to his overwhelming reliance on experimentation. Many things that were known in his time and even today are not easily proven by experimentation. Going back to the origin of comets, he is not suggesting any discussion or theories for things that cannot be proven by experimentation. I would suggest however, that for many things including comets, it was discussion and theorizing without experimentation that led to a greater understanding of our world. Many of these types of theories are proven centuries about the first person originally proposed them. They guided science in the right direction. Galileo does not provide any sort of support for this type of