3 men and their profound impact on society

• They helped remove the intellectual shackles with which the Catholic Church had been restraining the scientific community for decades (Galileo and Darwin)
  • From a historical standpoint, the Catholic Church has a reputation of acting as an oppressing force against the influx of radical, unsettling scientific ideas or concepts that challenge or come into conflict with God. In the eras of both Galileo and Darwin, this was certainly the case. Galileo lived in a time where both Copernican and Aristotelian/Ptolemaic theories existed, but it was considered heresy to openly support a theory that did not place earth, and therefore humans and God, at the center of the universe. Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, albeit published without the intention of upsetting the church, would do just that, and this iconic work would lead to his incarceration and house arrest by the hands of the inquisition. Similarly, Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection put forth the notion that God is not absolutely necessary in a Darwinian universe and his theories replaced divine intervention with a natural one. Again exemplifying the oppressive nature of the Church, Darwin resisted the temptation to publish his findings for years for fear of persecution. Collectively, although Galileo and Darwin did not act directly against the church per se, they gave birth to ideas, which, over time, would grow to degrade against the intellectual monopoly of the Church.
• They were perhaps the most influential catalysts on the field of Astronomy (Galileo and Newton)
  • As mentioned above, Galileo’s defense of the heliocentric universe helped solidify its place within the scientific community and ushered the politically charged paradigm towards widespread acceptance. In addition to this work, Galileo’s telescope, modeled initially from a verbal description of a similar device created in the Netherlands, allowed him to see the heavens to a distance that had been previously unknown. This, in turn, subsequently led to the discovery of Jupiter’s moons and advanced work on our own moon, sunspots and the Milky Way galaxy. Collectively, these works ushered in a new era of astrology and Newton, in his own right, accomplished a similar feat with his work. His invention of the calculus transformed our ability to mathematically comprehend and describe motion, to include planetary motion. Furthermore, his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica laid the foundation for our current understanding of gravity and planetary motion. Indeed, the laws of motion that he set forth in his iconic work remain the bedrock of simple mechanics. In addition to his academic accomplishments, Newton redesigned the telescope to use reflecting mirrors instead of refracting glass lenses, thereby drastically increasing the range and clarity capable from a telescope. Just as Galileo opened the door to the next era of astronomical development, Newton can be readily identified as the individual who opened the door to ours.
• Collectively, these three men radically changed the way in which we as human beings place ourselves within a higher world order (Galileo, Newton and Darwin)
  • The ideas that truly shake our societal intellectual paradigms are the ones that revolutionize the way in which we perceive our place in the greater universe and individually, these three men accomplished that. With Galileo’s aforementioned assessment on the two astronomical fields of thought, he not only solidified our scientific acceptance of a heliocentric universe, but also did so for society’s masses. This iconic work was written as a dialogue not mathematically of philosophically intensive, and written in language comprehendible to the average man. By doing this he allowed for this knowledge and paradigm shift to permeate past the upper echelon of the educational elite. Decades later, Newton’s Principia Mathematica had a similar effect. By asserting the existence of a universal gravitational force and using this force as a mathematical explanation for planetary motion he again depicted earth as not the pinnacle of all things great and unique, but rather just another planet, operating under the same laws as every other planet in our universe. Lastly, Darwin’s rejection of creationism (not directly, but rather through the spread of a radically new biological principle) and minimization of God’s influence on man’s development again eliminated the divine nature of man by depicting him as being no different to all the other animals in our environment. Collectively, these men definitively changed how man viewed his own place within the environment, and how he viewed his planet among the universe.