Download or read book Before Galileo written by John Freely and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A physicist and historian sheds light on scientific minds, breakthroughs, and innovations that paved the way for the Scientific Revolution. Histories of modern science often begin with the heroic battle between Galileo and the Catholic Church, a conflict which ignited the Scientific Revolution and led to the world-changing discoveries of Isaac Newton. As a consequence of this narrative frame, virtually nothing is said about the European scholars who came before. In reality, more than a millennium before the Renaissance, a succession of scholars paved the way for the exciting discoveries usually credited to Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, and others. In Before Galileo, John Freely examines the pioneering research of the first European scientists, many of them monks whose influence ranged far beyond the walls of the monasteries where they studied and wrote.