Free Three Scientific Revolutions: How They Transformed Our Conceptions of Reality by Richard H. Schlagel Page A

clearest example was his incline plane experiments to demonstrate the accelerated law of free fall, providing an exceedingly detailed and precise description of the experiment.
    A piece of wooden molding or scantling, about 12 cubits long, half a cubit wide, and three finger-breadths thick, was taken; on its edge was cut a channel a little more than one finger in breadth; having made this groove very straight, smooth, and polished, and having lined it with parchment . . . we rolled along it a hard, smooth and very round bronze ball. Having placed this board in a sloping position, by lifting one end some one or two cubits above the other, we rolled the ball . . . along the channel, noting . . . the time required to make the descent. We repeated this experiment more than once in order to measure the time with an accuracy such that the deviation between two observations never exceeded one-tenth of a pulse-beat. (p. 171)
    Incredibly, despite this exact description, two of Galileo’s contemporaries, Maria Mersenne and René Descartes, questioned their authenticity, Mersenne declaring “I doubt whether Galileo actually performed the experiments of fall down incline planes, since he does not speak of them, and since the ratio he gives is often contradicted by experiment.” Descartes “‘denied’ all of Galileo’s experiments! Because . . . those . . . which resulted in measurements, in precise values, were falsified by his contemporaries.” 30 But given the meticulous description of his experiments, I do not see in fairness how anyone could deny that he performed them and since his ratio is correct, if his contemporaries found them false, it was because they were incompetent, not that he was!
    Following the publication of his book Galileo lived four more years, blind and exhausted, dying on January 9, 1642, less than two months before his seventy-eighth birthday. His body was “privately deposited” in the magnificent church of Santa Croce in Florence. The Grand Duke intended to honor him with a splendid tomb similar to that of Michelangelo, but was prevented by the Catholic Church that “forbade any honors to a man who had died under vehement suspicion of heresy” (Drake, p. 436). Now, as is befitting, there does exist a sepulcher opposite that of Michelangelo and just as grand as he deserves. For as Maurice Clavelin’s summary of his contributions justly states:
    The reason, therefore, why no scientific problem was ever the same again as it had been before Galileo tackled it lay largely in his redefinition of scientific intelligibility and in the means by which he achieved it: only a new explanatory ideal and an unprecedented skill in combining reason with observation could have changed natural philosophy in so radical a way. No wonder then that, as we read his works, we are struck above all by the remarkable way in which he impressed the features of classical science upon a 2000-year-old picture of scientific rationality. 31
    There is no way I could add to such a deserving and splendid tribute.

Chapter III
    THE CULMINATING ACHIEVEMENT OF NEWTON
    In a previous quotation Galileo had stated that his “work is merely the beginning . . . by which other minds more acute than mine will explore its remote corners” that provides an excellent transition to Newton. As we shall find, Newton’s astronomical explanations will reflect Kepler’s three laws while his conception of the proper scientific method and investigations of terrestrial motions will follow the initiatives of Galileo. The resemblance between his statements about scientific inquiry are strikingly similar to Galileo’s, justifying his gracious acknowledgement that his achievements were possible because of those who came before him.
    Newton has acquired the greater reputation for having combined the discoveries and laws of Kepler and Galileo into a unified system of laws within a theoretical framework