Excerpt from The Starry Messenger (1610)

Reprinted in The Achievement of Galileo

Edited by James Brophy and Henry Paolucci
Published in 1962

Ascientific revolution occurred during the Renaissance through the influence of humanists who took a renewed interest in the work of ancient philosophers. Humanism was a movement initiated in Florence, Italy, in the mid-1300s by scholars who set out to revive the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (called the classical period). They hoped to start a cultural rebirth, or renaissance, that would end what they believed was the "barbarism" of the Middle Ages, the thousand-year period that began with the fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Scientists were particularly interested in giving Greek texts updated translations and interpretations. They developed new theories that eventually replaced the Greek concepts that...