You’ve probably heard the names Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei at least once. They were two of the most important scientific minds in the 1500s and 1600s. And they made some of the most extraordinary discoveries that do not seem so extraordinary anymore. For example, Sir Isaac Newton is accredited with the discovery of gravity, but when looked upon by high schoolers in physics class one of the first thoughts happens to be "is this guy really famous because he discovered that things fall?" Of course, this is putting gravity in very general terms, but it still amazes many people that someone is so famous (at least in the scientific community) for a discovery that seems so simple. But a question that is often heard in many math and science classes is, “How am I going to use this in the real world.” So the question is, why are Newton and Galileo still important and how do they affect you every day? The answer can be quite surprising but comes along with a little bit of a history lesson of both the two scientists and what happened after them.
Currently we live in what is commonly known as the age of technology. We use technology to help us on a day-to-day basis but also we use technology as a form of pleasure. But the development of this age of technology comes from a historical event or time frame known as the scientific revolution. The scientific revolution is the timeframe starting around the late 1500s and early 1600s that saw mass advancement in chemistry, physics, mathematics, anatomy, and astronomy. Many historians and scientist accredit the start of this revolution to the works of Galileo and Newton. But the major point to mention is that the scientific revolution also led to the start of the industrial revolution which caused an increase in the amount of technology used and manufactured which leads us to the age of technology.
Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer who is most famous for his work on the heliocentric model of cosmology (the model that predicts and shows that the earth orbits around the sun). The heliocentric model of cosmology seems to people of the modern day to be one of the most basic things, “of course we orbit the sun people will say,” but what people don’t know is that it actually makes sense for a geocentric model (the model where the sun and all other celestial objects orbit around the earth) when you look at it from the viewpoint of people from this time. If you ever look up during the day at almost any two different times you may notice that the sun moves or is perceived to move. Also if you look up at a starry night you may notice that the stars also are perceived to move. So it makes sense that all of these things orbit the earth but the truth is the earth rotates about an axis so it seems like everything else is moving but really the earth is. Another explanation for geocentrism is that the night sky all moves except the star Polaris. What this is seen as in the geocentric model is that the star Polaris has some form of importance to the night sky, while the actual explanation is that the star Polaris is aligned almost exactly with the earth’s axis so it does not seem to move. Geocentricism fails to explain one vital thing though is the geocentrism cannot explain one of Galileo’s discoveries, Jupiter has moons. This discovery did many things including disproving geocentrism, showing the earth could orbit around the sun without losing its moon, and confirming Kepler’s third law of planetary motion. This showed that old, dogmatic ideas could be taken down with facts such as these but also it came with a more important idea that came far after Galileo. When Galileo publishes his results, he was asked to hide his results by one of the most powerful groups at the time, the Catholic Church. Galileo later by request of the pope published a pamphlet argue for both sides geocentrism and heliocentricism, but the church and the pope felt it still favored the heliocentric side, so they charged Galileo with heresy and placed him under house arrest. When his story is looked back upon by almost everyone now that this was wrong to do to Galileo and since then the church has been more accepting of scientific results, now even inviting scientist for lectures at the Vatican.
Sir Isaac Newton was truly had a marvelous amount of intellect for the time. His discoveries transcended the knowledge of physics and of the universe that we currently had. His discoveries included gravity, the laws of motion, differential and integral calculus, and work in optics which led to the discovery of the visible light spectrum. Newton’s Discoveries, while still important have little impact on us right now, but his discoveries are the basis for modern physics. He himself is almost solely responsible for minds such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. He is partially responsible by the two “pillars” of modern physics quantum mechanics and general relativity, by coming up with mechanics laws of motion that describe the universe and by coming up with his theory of gravity. While these discoveries also have little to no effect on most people, they have been the basis for many technological advances, such as television, microwaves, and even the internet. So for this reason Isaac Newton has truly impacted society to a level most people would not expect.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Galileo.html
