It was used by Galileo as early as 1612, and came into English use much later, when it supplanted trunk and cylinder, the terms hitherto used to denote the telescope.
Since the modern discovery of the science of motion by Galileo which changed natural science, and the modern revolution of philosophy by Descartes which changed metaphysics, the study of Aristotle has become less universal; but it did not die out, and received a fresh stimulus especially from Julius Pacius, who going back through G.
Weight is in fact not purely a combination of forces, in the sense in which that term is defined in connexion with the laws of motion, but corresponds to the Galileo acceleration with which the body would begin to move relatively to the earth if the string were cut.
Nevertheless, while Fallopius, Vesalius and Galileo were claiming attention to their discoveries, G.
In Italian, collections of dialogues, on the model of;Plato, have been composed by Torquato Tasso (1 586), by Galileo (1632), by Galiani (1770), by Leopardi (1825), and by a host of lesser writers.
But the discovery which was at once perceived to be most important in itself, and most revolutionary in its effects, was that of Jupiter's satellites, first seen by Galileo on the 7th of January 1610, and by him named Sidera Medicea, in honour of the grand-duke of Tuscany, Cosmo II., who had been his pupil, and was about to become his employer.
At the same time, however, he followed with interest the discoveries of Galileo and Kepler, and became more and more dissatisfied with the Peripatetic system.
To Cardinal Hohenzollern, Urban was reported to have said that the theory of the earth's motion had not been and could not be condemned as heretical, but only as rash; and in 1630 the brilliant Dominican monk Tommaso Campanella wrote to Galileo that the pope had expressed to him in conversation his disapproval of the prohibitory decree.
Thus, in the full anticipation of added renown, and without any misgiving as to ulterior consequences, Galileo set himself, on his return to Florence, to complete his famous but ill-starred work, the Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del mondo.
Its success greatly helped to break down the old prejudices, and to bring home to the minds of ordinary men the truth of the new ideas propounded by Galileo and Torricelli.