February 15 this year marks the 447th anniversary of the birth of one of the founders of modern exact natural science, the outstanding Italian physicist Galileo Galilei. It is from him that physics as a science originates.
But first he wanted to devote his life to medicine, entering the University of Pisa in 1581. But, after reading the works of Archimedes and Euclid, he left the university and studied mathematics on his own for four years. Already in 1582, observing pendulums, Galileo discovered the law of isochronism - the independence of the period of oscillation of a pendulum from the swing of oscillations and the mass of the load - and put forward the idea of using pendulums in clocks. Applying mathematics not only to mechanics, but also to hydrostatics, he invented hydrostatic balances in 1586, which were used in weighing precious metals and their alloys.
Over the next 20 years, he experimentally and theoretically established the basic principles of mechanics. First of all, this is the principle of relativity for rectilinear and uniform motion and the principle of constant acceleration under the influence of gravity. The first principle later led Newton to the concept of an inertial frame of reference, and the second to the concept of inertial mass. And Einstein, having extended Galileo’s principle of relativity to everything physical processes(in particular to light), and interpreting its second principle as the equivalence of the forces of inertia and gravity, created general theory relativity.
In 1609, Galileo created his first telescope and began systematic astronomical observations. He discovers mountains on the Moon, four satellites of Jupiter.
Discovers that the Milky Way is made up of many stars. Reveals the sunspot and its rotation, the phases of Venus. These astronomical discoveries brought Galileo and his telescope such wide popularity that he even started producing telescopes. And in 1610-14, combining and selecting the distance between lenses, he invented the microscope. These two instruments served as powerful tools for scientific research in subsequent centuries.
And Galileo himself investigated the nature of light, color, and dealt with issues of physical optics.
He formulated the idea of the finite speed of light propagation and conducted experiments to determine it.
Galileo’s astronomical discoveries were summarized by him in his treatise, “Dialogue on the Two Major Systems of the World,” published in 1632, which practically confirmed the correctness of Copernicus’ teaching about the heliocentric system of the world. This book infuriated the churchmen. The Inquisition banned the book, and in 1633 Galileo himself was forced to renounce his views and excommunicated. In the same church where Giordano Bruno, who never renounced his views, was sentenced to burning in 1600, Galileo, on his knees, pronounced the text of renunciation offered to him.
Galileo Galilei died on January 8, 1642 at the age of 78. He was buried without honors or a gravestone. In 1737, 95 years later, his ashes were transferred to Florence, to the Church of Santa Croce. And in 1992, only 350 years after the death of Galileo, Pope John Paul II, after the work of a special commission, recognized heliocentric system peace and dropped the charges against the great scientist.
To talk in detail about everything that the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei enriched science with. He proved himself in mathematics, and in astronomy, and in mechanics, and, and in.
Astronomy
The main merit of G. Galileo to astronomy lies not even in his discoveries, but in the fact that he gave this science a working instrument - the telescope. Some historians (in particular, N. Budur) call G. Galileo a plagiarist who appropriated the invention of the Dutchman I. Lippershney. The accusation is unfair: G. Galileo knew about the Dutch “magic trumpet” only from the Venetian envoy, who did not report on the design of the device.
G. Galileo himself guessed about the structure of the pipe and designed it. In addition, I. Lippershney’s telescope provided a threefold magnification; this was not enough for astronomical observations. G. Galileo managed to achieve an increase of 34.6 times. With such a telescope it was possible to observe celestial bodies.
With the help of his invention, the astronomer saw the Sun and guessed from their movement that the Sun was rotating. He observed the phases of Venus, saw the mountains on the Moon and their shadows, from which he calculated the height of the mountains.
G. Galileo's telescope made it possible to see the four largest satellites of Jupiter. G. Galileo named them Medicean stars in honor of his patron Ferdinand de Medici, Duke of Tuscany. Subsequently, they were given other names: Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Europa. The significance of this discovery for the era of G. Galileo is difficult to overestimate. There was a struggle between supporters of geocentrism and heliocentrism. Opening celestial bodies, revolving not around the Earth, but around another object, was a serious argument in favor of the theory of N. Copernicus.
Other sciences
Physics in modern understanding begins with the works of G. Galileo. He is the founder scientific method, combining experiment and its rational understanding.
This is how he studied, for example, the free fall of bodies. The researcher found that the body's weight did not affect its free fall. Along with the laws of free fall, he discovered the movement of a body on an inclined plane, inertia, a constant period of oscillation, and the addition of movements. Many of G. Galileo's ideas were subsequently developed by I. Newton.
In mathematics, the scientist made a significant contribution to the development of probability theory, and also laid the foundations of set theory, formulating the “Galileo's paradox”: natural numbers as many as there are squares, although most of the numbers are not squares.
Inventions
The telescope is not the only device designed by G. Galileo.
This scientist created the first thermometer, albeit without a scale, as well as hydrostatic balances. The proportional compass, invented by G. Galileo, is still used in drawing. G. Galileo also designed a microscope. It did not provide high magnification, but was suitable for studying insects.
The influence exerted by the discoveries of G. Galileo on further development science, was truly fateful. And A. Einstein was right when he called G. Galileo “the father of modern science.”
Introduction
1. Formation of Galileo's views in the light of history
2. Galileo as the founder of the experimental-mathematical method of studying nature
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
In the middle of the 16th century, the humanism of the Platonic school in Italy passed its zenith; its main time had passed. In the second half of the 16th century early XVII V. a special one comes on stage philosophical field- philosophy of nature. The philosophy of nature is a typical expression of Renaissance nature. Its homeland was Italy, the most famous representative of which was Giordano Bruno. In parallel with the philosophy of nature, a new natural science is developing, implementing a radical revaluation of old traditions and premises. It brings a number of epoch-making discoveries and becomes one of the most important sources of new philosophy. The philosophical and methodological basis sciences, and new ones are being created. Scholastic doctrine of nature, highest level which was achieved by the Parisian and Oxford schools in the 14th century, in essence never crossed the boundaries of theoretical speculation. In contrast, Renaissance scientists put experience, the study of nature, and the experimental method of research in the foreground. Mathematics is gaining a prominent place; the principle of mathematization of science corresponds to the main progressive trends in the development of science, scientific and philosophical thinking.
New trends in science were reflected in the works of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and Galileo Galilei (1546-1642).
The most important battlefield on which the battle took place between the new and old world, between the conservative and progressive forces of society, religion and science, was astronomy. Medieval religious teaching was based on the idea of the Earth as God's chosen planet and the privileged position of man in the universe. By studying astronomical objects, scientists of that time comprehended in practice the laws of motion of celestial bodies and laid down fundamental concepts for the development of another science - physics. Galileo Galilei became one of the founders of the fundamental laws of physics.
In the presented work, we provide brief biographical information about the scientist, and also reveal his views on the natural world in philosophical and scientific terms, since scientists of that time, understanding the natural world and comprehending it philosophically, made deep scientific conclusions based on the logical methods of philosophy they used .
1. Brief biographical information
The founder of the experimental-mathematical method of studying nature was the great Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Leonardo da Vinci gave only outlines of such a method for studying nature, while Galileo left a detailed presentation of this method and formulated the most important principles of the mechanical world.
Galileo was born into a noble but impoverished family in the city of Pisa on February 15, 1564 (not far from Florence). The scientist’s father was a composer and musician, but it was difficult to live on the money he earned, and the latter worked part-time as a cloth trader. Until the age of 11, Galileo studied at a regular school, but after his family moved to Florence, he began studying at a school at a Benedictine monastery, and at the age of 17 he entered to the University of Pisa and began to prepare to become a doctor. First scientific work Galileo's "Small Hydrostatic Balances" was published in 1586 and it brought Galileo some fame among scientists. On the recommendation of one of them, Guido Ubalde del Monte, Galilei received the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1589 and at the age of 25 became a professor.
Galileo taught mathematics and astronomy to students in accordance with the teachings of Ptolemy, and his experiments date back to the same period of time, which he carried out by throwing various bodies from the leaning Leaning Tower of Pisa to see if they fell in accordance with the teachings of Aristotle - heavy ones faster than light ones. The answer was negative.
In On Motion, published in 1590, Galileo criticized Aristotle's doctrine of the fall of bodies. Galileo's criticism of Aristotle's views caused discontent and the scientist accepted an offer to occupy the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua. The scientist's biographers noted the Padua period as the most fruitful and happiest in his life. Here Galileo found a family by marrying Marina Gamba and had two daughters: Virginia (1600), Livia (1601) and a son, Vincenzo (1606). In 1606, Galileo became interested in astronomy
For the triumph of the Copernican theory and the ideas expressed by Giordano Bruno, and consequently for the progress of the materialistic worldview in general, the astronomical discoveries made by Galileo with the help of the telescope he designed were of great importance. He discovered craters and ridges on the Moon (in his mind - “mountains” and “seas”), saw countless clusters of stars forming the Milky Way, saw satellites, Jupiter, saw spots on the Sun, etc. Thanks to these discoveries, Galileo gained the pan-European fame of “Columbus of Heaven.” Galileo's astronomical discoveries, primarily the satellites of Jupiter, became clear evidence of the truth of Copernicus's heliocentric theory, and the phenomena observed on the Moon, which appeared to be a planet quite similar to the Earth, and spots on the Sun confirmed Bruno's idea of the physical homogeneity of the Earth and the sky. The discovery of the stellar composition of the Milky Way was indirect evidence of the countless worlds in the Universe. In March 1610, he published Galileo’s works on astronomy in his work “The Starry Messenger”, and this was the beginning of his new life. Tuscan Duke Cosimo 11 Medici invited Galileo to become a court mathematician, and he accepted the offer, returning to live in Florence.
These discoveries of Galileo marked the beginning of his fierce polemics with scholastics and churchmen who defended the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic picture of the world. If so far Catholic Church for the reasons stated above, was forced to endure the views of those scientists who recognized the Copernican theory as one of the hypotheses, and its ideologists believed that it was impossible to prove this hypothesis, now that this evidence has appeared, the Roman Church decides to prohibit the propaganda of Copernicus’s views even in as a hypothesis, and the book of Copernicus itself is included in the “List of Prohibited Books” (1616). All this put Galileo's work in jeopardy, but he continued to work to improve the evidence for the truth of Copernicus' theory. In this regard, Galileo’s work in the field of mechanics also played a huge role. While still a student, Galileo Galilei observed in the cathedral of Pisa that chandeliers of different sizes and weights, but having the same length, also have the same periods of oscillation. He compared chandeliers with a pendulum and based on this he concluded that the period of oscillation of a pendulum will be greater, the longer the pendulum is. Since at that time mechanical watches were not yet invented to measure time; to determine the period of oscillations, Galileo used the beats of his own pulse.
The scholastic physics that dominated this era, based on superficial observations and speculative calculations, was clogged with ideas about the movement of things in accordance with their “nature” and purpose, about the natural heaviness and lightness of bodies, about the “fear of emptiness,” about the perfection of circular motion and others. unscientific speculations that are intertwined in a tangled knot with religious dogmas and biblical myths. Galileo, through a series of brilliant experiments, gradually unraveled it and created the most important branch of mechanics - dynamics, i.e. the doctrine of the movement of bodies.
Already in 1616, Galileo was accused of striving for heresy, since the teachings of Copernicus that year were recognized as false by 11 theologians and Copernicus’s book “On Conversion” celestial spheres" was included in the index of prohibited books; accordingly, any propaganda of the teachings of Copernicus was prohibited.
In 1623, under the name of Urban V111, Galileo's friend Cardinal Maffeo Barberini became pope and Galileo hoped for the lifting of the above ban, but having received a refusal, he returned to Florence. There Galileo continued to work on his book “Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World” and in 1632 it was published. The publication of the book caused a sharp reaction from the church and the scientist was summoned to Rome. In one of his letters, Galileo wrote: “I arrived in Rome on February 10, 1633 and relied on the mercy of the Inquisition and the Holy Father... First they locked me in the Trinity Castle on the mountain, and the next day the commissioner of the Inquisition visited me and took me away in his carriage. On the way, he asked me various questions and expressed the wish that I would stop the scandal caused in Italy by my discovery concerning the movement of the earth... To all the mathematical proofs that I could oppose to him, he answered me with words from the Holy Scriptures: “The earth was and will be motionless forever and ever."
The investigation into Galileo's case lasted from April to June 1633, and on June 22, Galileo pronounced the text of abdication before the Inquisition court, and after that he was exiled to his villa. While under house arrest, Galileo writes “Conversations and mathematical proofs concerning two new areas of science”, where in particular he sets out the fundamentals of dynamics (the law of free fall, the law of addition of displacements, the doctrine of the resistance of materials), but they refuse to print the book and it is published only in Holland in July 1638, however, the blind scientist was never able to see his work with his own eyes, but could only touch it with his hands.
In November 1979, Pope John Paul 11 officially admitted that the Inquisition in 1633 made a mistake against the scientist by forcing him to forcibly renounce the Copernican theory.
“ShkolaLa” welcomes all its readers who want to know a lot.
Once upon a time everyone thought like this:
The earth is a flat, huge nickel,
But one man took the telescope,
Opened the way for us to the space age.
Who do you think this is?
Among the world-famous scientists is Galileo Galilei. In which country you were born and how you studied, what you discovered and what you became famous for - these are the questions to which we will look for answers today.
Lesson plan:
Where are future scientists born?
The poor family where little Galileo Galilei was born in 1564 lived in the Italian city of Pisa.
The father of the future scientist was a true master in various fields, from mathematics to art history, so it is not at all surprising that from childhood young Galileo fell in love with painting and music and gravitated toward the exact sciences.
When the boy turned eleven, the family from Pisa, where Galileo lived, moved to another city in Italy - Florence.
There he began his studies in a monastery, where the young student demonstrated brilliant abilities in the study of sciences. He even thought about a career as a clergyman, but his father did not approve of his choice, wanting his son to become a doctor. That is why, at seventeen, Galileo moved to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Pisa and began to diligently study philosophy, physics and mathematics.
However, he was unable to graduate from university for a simple reason: his family could not pay for his further education. Having left the third year, student Galileo begins self-education in the field of physical and mathematical sciences.
Thanks to his friendship with the wealthy Marquis del Monte, the young man managed to obtain a paid scientific position as a teacher of astronomy and mathematics at the University of Pisa.
During his university work he spent various experiences, the result of which were the laws of free fall, the movement of a body on an inclined plane and the force of inertia that he discovered.
Since 1606, the scientist has been closely involved in astronomy.
Interesting Facts! Full name scientist - Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de Galilei.
About mathematics, mechanics and physics
It is said that, while a university professor in the town of Pisa, Galileo conducted experiments by dropping objects of different weights from the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa to disprove Aristotle's theory. Even in some textbooks you can find such a picture.
Only these experiments are not mentioned anywhere in Galileo’s works. Most likely, as researchers today believe, this is a myth.
But the scientist rolled objects along an inclined plane, measuring time by his own heart pulse. There were no accurate clocks back then! These very experiments were put into the laws of motion of bodies.
Galileo was credited with inventing the thermometer in 1592. The device was then called a thermoscope, and it was completely primitive. A thin glass tube was soldered to the glass ball. This structure was placed in liquid. The air in the ball heated up and displaced the liquid in the tube. The higher the temperature, the more air in the ball and the lower the water level in the tube.
In 1606, an article appeared where Galileo laid out a drawing of a proportional compass. This is a simple tool that converted measured dimensions to scale and was used in architecture and drafting.
Galileo is credited with the invention of the microscope. In 1609, he made a “small eye” with two lenses - convex and concave. Using his invention, the scientist examined insects.
With his research, Galileo laid the foundations of classical physics and mechanics. Thus, on the basis of his conclusions about inertia, Newton subsequently established the first law of mechanics, according to which any body is at rest or moves uniformly in the absence of external forces.
His studies of pendulum oscillations formed the basis for the invention of the pendulum clock and made it possible to make precise measurements in physics.
Interesting Facts! Galileo not only succeeded in natural sciences, but was also a creative person: he knew literature very well and wrote poetry.
About astronomical discoveries that shocked the world
In 1609, a scientist heard a rumor about the existence of a device that could help view distant objects by collecting light. If you already guessed, it was called a telescope, which is translated from Greek as “look far away.”
For his invention, Galileo modified the telescope with lenses, and this device was capable of magnifying objects 3 times. Time after time, he assembled a new combination of several telescopes, and it gave more and more magnification. As a result, Galileo’s “visionary” began to zoom in 32 times.
What discoveries in the field of astronomy belonged to Galileo Galilei and made him famous throughout the world, becoming real sensations? How did his invention help the scientist?
- Galileo Galilei told everyone that this is a planet comparable to the Earth. He saw plains, craters and mountains on its surface.
- Thanks to the telescope, Galileo discovered four satellites of Jupiter, today called “Galilean”, and appeared to everyone in the form of a strip, crumbling into many stars.
- By placing smoked glass at the telescope, the scientist was able to examine it, see spots on it and prove to everyone that it was the Earth that revolved around it, and not vice versa, as Aristotle believed and religion and the Bible said.
- He was the first to see the surroundings, which he took for satellites, today known to us as rings, found different phases of Venus and made it possible to observe previously unknown stars.
Galileo Galilei combined his discoveries in the book “Star Messenger”, confirming the hypothesis that our planet is mobile and rotates around an axis, and the sun does not revolve around us, which caused the condemnation of the church. His work was called heresy, and the scientist himself lost his freedom of movement and was placed under house arrest.
Interesting Facts! It is quite surprising for our developed world that it was only in 1992 that the Vatican and the Pope recognized that Galileo was right about the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Until this time, the Catholic Church was sure that the opposite was happening: our planet is motionless, and the Sun “walks” around us.
This is how you can briefly tell about the life of an outstanding scientist who gave impetus to the development of astronomy, physics and mathematics.
A famous science and entertainment television program was named after Galileo Galilei. The host of this program, Alexander Pushnoy, and his colleagues conducted all sorts of different experiments and tried to explain what they did. I suggest watching an excerpt from this wonderful program right now.
“ShkolaLa” says goodbye for a while to look for and share useful information with you again and again.
Between his contemporaries was based mainly on the great discoveries he made with the help of a telescope. Indeed, they provided a lot of very important new knowledge about the celestial bodies, and almost each of them served as new proof of the truth of the system Copernicus. Spots on the illuminated part of the moon, broken outlines on the edge of the illuminated part, viewed through a telescope, turned out to be irregularities on its surface, and Galileo had already compared them with the mountains of our globe. Observing the sun, Galileo discovered spots on it, from the movement of which it became obvious that the sun was rotating around its axis. Observing Venus, Galileo saw that it had the same phases as the moon. (Copernicus already said that it must be so). Galileo discovered the satellites of Jupiter, and made many observations of them in order to determine the law of their rotation around their planet; he realized that the differences in time shown by clocks at different longitudes when observing an eclipse of one or another satellite of Jupiter could serve to determine the difference in these longitudes, and he tried to compile tables of the movements of Jupiter’s satellites that would have the accuracy necessary for this determination. The Dutch government understood the importance of this manual for navigation and asked Galileo not to abandon his work until it was completed; but death stopped it before it ended.
Galileo discovered the rings of Saturn. (Given the weakness of the telescopes through which he made his observations, this ring seemed to form part of the planet itself; the fact that it was separated from it by a distance was only seen Huygens). Galileo's discoveries also provided important new knowledge about the stars. He saw that Milky Way consists of stars, the faint radiance of which merges into a light strip for a simple eye; similarly, many of the nebulous spots turned out to be composed of stars.
Portrait of Galileo Galilei. Artist D. Tintoretto, ca. 1605-1607
But no matter how brilliant Galileo’s astronomical discoveries were, his discoveries in mechanics were no less important; Only his works raised it to the level of science. He dispelled previous erroneous concepts about the law of motion and found true ideas about it. Aristotle's false opinions about the essence of motion, while remaining dominant, greatly hindered the discovery of the laws of motion. Archimedes' concepts were the only basis for deducing truth. Guido Ubaldi and the Dutch mathematician Stevin already took the principles of Archimedes as the basis for their works and expanded some of them. But confused, completely erroneous concepts about movement continued to dominate. Before Galileo, there were almost no attempts to consider the facts of motion from a mathematical point of view. Galileo laid a solid foundation for mechanics with his research on the motion of falling and thrown bodies, the swing of a pendulum, and the fall of a body on an inclined plane. The laws of motion that he found and based on the concept of acceleration of free fall became the initial truths for all subsequent studies of the mechanical order of natural phenomena. Without Galileo's discoveries in mechanics, Newton's discoveries would hardly have been possible.
Galileo's students continued his work. One of them, Castelli (b. 1577, d. 1644), successfully applied the concepts of general laws of motion developed by Galileo to the movement of water and, thanks to this, successfully fulfilled the assignment given to him by Urban VIII to regulate the flow of rivers of the papal state. Another student of Galileo, Toricelli(born in 1618, died in 1647) became famous for the discovery that air has heaviness; This eliminated the erroneous opinion that nature abhors a vacuum (horror vacui).
