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Galileo made non-trivial advances in science. He's also famous for his house arrest. Neither imply he deserves the reputation of "greatest scientist ever"—admit
by duaneb 11y ago
Galileo made non-trivial advances in science. He's also famous for his house arrest. Neither imply he deserves the reputation of "greatest scientist ever"—admittedly, not a reputation I'm familiar with. Even in his time period, Kepler probably deserves at least equal recognition.
- javajosh 11y agoKepler (and don't forget Tycho Brahe) get quite a lot of recognition, specifically as precursors to Newton.
- duaneb 11y agoI'm not saying they don't. But Galileo certainly gets too much.
- brg 11y agoThere is a very long list of greatest scientist ever, but being on the list doesn't take away from others on the list. Just off the cuff, any list much consider * Aristotle * Archimedes * Kepler * Galileo * Newton * Faraday * Gauss * Maxwell * Einstein
- duaneb 11y ago> There is a very long list of greatest scientist ever This makes zero sense—the word "greatest" apparently doesn't mean much.
- Retra 11y agoBefore Copernicus and Galileo, most of European 'academia' was holding steadfast to the ideas proposed by Aristotle and his legacy. The heavens where unchanging and divine - as clockwork, engineered in such a way that the divine human capacity for logical thought could understand it and predict it. And Earthly life was chaotic, dirty, and transient, with all regularity and flux a side-effect of heavenly or humanly processes: the divine. Galileo's telescope showed these people a supernova. Moons around jupiter. Sunspots. Galileo proved that the heavens were changing, which did a lot to upset this worldview, and paved the way for people like Newton to do work independent of the Aristotelian world-view, and assert that the same laws that govern us on Earth also govern the heavens. (Let's also not forget that he correctly disagreed with Aristotle on the behavior of objects under the influence of gravity.) Kepler deserves equal recognition, and he probably gets it. But really, they're both dead, so the important thing is for us to recognize what works and what doesn't. Not who found out what works.
- duaneb 11y ago> Kepler deserves equal recognition, and he probably gets it. Evidently not; there isn't an article arguing he is the best scientist ever.