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Galileo demonstrated that any projectile would move in a parabola

The foundation of ballistics

Once distinctions between the traditional four elements and their
natural places are discarded, Galileo recognized, all motion is natural,
and any force, however slight, can set a body in motion. Once moving, leaving friction aside, a body will continue until some other force
brings it to a halt. Newton later saw this, correctly, as the basis for his
own concept of what came to be called "inertia". Galileo also showed
that if the vertical acceleration of a falling body is combined with
horizontal motion, the resultant path of the body is parabolic. He
tested this by mounting a chute on a table and letting the ball on it fly
off the edge, marking the spot where the ball landed. He showed that
any projectile would move in a parabola. This forms the basis of
ballistics, a principle used in gunnery and rocketry.
The telescope and the sun-centered Universe
By about 1609, Galileo had worked out the main lines of this new
science of uniformly accelerated motion, and told friends that he was
preparing a book on it. At this point, he was distracted by hearing of a
new and remarkable invention, the telescope. Would a device that
made distant objects appear larger show us more of the sky, too? And
would not greater knowledge of the sky help to confirm the hypothesis of Copernicus, to which he had been sympathetic for at least a
dozen years?
In the early 16th century, the Polish clergyman and astronomer
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) had proposed that the center of
what we now know as the Solar System was the Sun; whereas in all
ancient cosmologies, the Earth was at the center of the whole Universe. He pointed out that, if we assume the Earth rotates daily about
its own axis, and is also in orbit around the Sun, many anomalies in
the movements of the planets can be explained quite simply. Copernicus worked out the orbits of the planets in some detail, and showed
how his great idea would also enable him to estimate the distances of
the planets from the Sun. Fearing ridicule, he delayed the publication
of his book until the end of his life, in 1543. In fact, little notice was
taken of his ideas for many years. Comprehension of the physical
world depended on the centrality and immobility of the Earth. Besides, the Bible occasionally speaks of the Sun moving across the sky,
and of the stationary Earth. Gradually, however, the news spread that
Copernicus - widely admired for his accurate computations - had put
forward this weird theory.
Nearly 30 years after his death, another astronomer took the theory
seriously, only to propose a compromise model. In this, all planets
except the Moon revolved around the Sun, but the Sun itself, with all
the planets in its train, revolved around the Earth. This was the system
of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), a young Danish nobleman who, like all
his contemporaries, had been astonished by the sudden appearance of
a new star in the sky in 1572 (Galileo later recalled how it was pointed
out to him as a boy). Most were concerned with what this phenom-

enon implied for astrology, but Brahe and a few others examined it
further. It failed to show any displacement when observed from
different positions - that is, it showed no parallax - as it should if
close to the Earth. Brahe decided this must be a true star: not some
meteorological wonder, but the first new star to appear in recorded
history. As a reward, he was granted the island of Hven and the
money to build there his "sky palace", Uraniborg, Europe's first
observatory.

The Florentine and other academies

Ever since 1442, when Cosimo de' Medici set up
an academy at Florence - called the "Platonic" in
imitation of Plato's academy established 2,000
years previously in Athens - academies had
proliferated in Italy, until every town with any
self-respect had one. They were not schools or
colleges, but more like clubs, where like-minded
people could get together and debate literary or
philosophical questions. Religion was a touchy
business, and often politics were, too: in Naples,
at one stage, academies were forbidden, as
centers of opposition to Spanish rule.
Natural philosophy (science) should have
proved a safe alternative subject, but this was not
always true. An "Academy of the Secrets of
Nature" was formed at Naples in the 1560s,
organized by the physicist Giambattista delia
Porta (1538-1615), who some years earlier had
published a book on "Natural Magic". In this, he
collected genuine effects - magnetic, optical,
chemical- mingled with much fancifullore.
Although delia Porta insisted that this magic,
however mysterious, was still natural, and did
not involve spirits or the supernatural, he was
interrogated by the Inquisition and his academy
had to be dissolved.
Many of these academies had a somewhat
esoteric air. Membership was restricted, and
meetings were ceremonial. To counter their own
tendency toward the grandiose, the academies
might give themselves self-deprecating names.
Galileo belonged to on at Padua styled the
"academy of the Sheltered" - a term used for the
inmates of a hospital, or almshouse.
A A portrait by the Florentine artist Ghirlandaio of

the philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), second from

left. Ficino translated many of the Greek classics into
Latin, most notably Plato's dialogs. Chosen to head the
new Platonic academy in Florence, he was a leading figure
in the development of Renaissance humanism.