Galilei and the scientific method

and the scientific method

galileo galilei

How astronomy looks into the stars, planets and their movements.

How astology looks into the stars, planets and their movements.

"How do you know that?"

A definition of"method"

• The answer requires making clear "how" we got the information, which method we used. These methodological questions are put also by scientists, historians, politicians and philosophers.
• In fact each discipline is defined by the object it studies, but mainly by its method.

Italian scientist and philosopher (1564-1642)

Introduction to galileo galilei

He never wrote a book on the definition of the scientific method, but he left us many methodological hints in his books.His main goals of the scientific method were:1. to achieve an objective knowledge, 2. to disengage knowledge from the principle of authority.

A scientific approach to the problem of method

In order to distance himself from tradition...

...he made use of;- sensate experiences, - necessary demonstrations, - experiments.

necessary demonstrations

consist in the process of stating a hypothesis and then deducing logical and mathematical consequences (method hypothetical-deductive)

experiment

reproduces in the laboratory the hypothesis and deductions stated previously (the experiment doesn't have to reproduce the concrete phenomenon, but only its ideal general conditions).

sensate experiences

are what is observed through senses, in particular sight.

it relies on technical devices and tools

Technical

of the scientific method

general features

Repeatable

any experiment, can be repeated by anyone because conditions and steps are public

Quantitative

all elements of the experiment are measured and measurable

Public

any scientists must unfold the conditions and procedures of the experiment

from galileo

to nasa

Scientific hypothesis may take a long time before they can be experimentally verified.That's the case of a hypothesis formulated by Galileo and demonstrated only in 1971...

Aristotle supposed that the objects fall at a speed depending on their weight.

Galileo wasn't convinced, so he outlined a mental experiment, where he dropped two objects of different weight at the same time, supposing that objects of different weight fall at the same time.

Just in 1971, when the astronout David Scott went to the moon with the mission Apollo 15, he took a feather and a hammer and he dropped them.Since the moon has no atmosphere, there is no friction, so it represented the ideal setting to verify Galielo's hypothesis.

VIdeo

Made by Lorenzo Carlentini

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