Does the trial of Galileo indicate that the church was hostile to new ideas in science?.

             Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) proved to be the first dramatic example of conflict between science .

             and religion. Galileo introduced and correctly explained the idea- what is the acceleration of a .

             free falling object, by doing this he quashed the previous theories of his predecessor, Aristotle. .

             Aristotle came up with the theory that the weight of an object and the medium through which it .

             was moving determined the downward speed of the object. Galileo, after having carried out .

             numerous experiments concluded that in a vacuum, an object accelerated independent of its .

             weight. He proved this by rolling a ball down a ramp at different angles and calculated the .

             acceleration. He found that the rate of acceleration was constant, according to the equation: .

             a=v/t. Aristotle"s thoughts tended to deal with the physical world we live in, Galileo on the other .

             hand was more concerned with an ideal world.

             The modern age of science began in 1543 with the publication of Copernicus"s book 'On .

             the revelation of the celestial orbs" . A key feature of the new science was mathematical .

             reasoning and quantifiable observations. According to the Copernican model the planets and the .

             earth revolve around the sun, this is accurate although mathematically simpler. One of the .

             important changes taking place was that people began to view the earth as a mathematical .

             structure, relationships were quantative, not qualative as they had been for Aristotle. The .

             scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century owes a lot to maths. Galileo found additional .

             evidence to support the copernican theory, with a combination of theory and experiment, which .

             was essential to his study, this can also be traced back to Archimedes in Ancient Greece.

             At first the church didn"t take Copernicus"s theory very seriously as astronomy and maths .

             didn"t seem to have any significant philosophical or theological relevance although Copernicus"s .