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Note: Galileo's Lamp
Tag(s): Galileo, GalileoYoung
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Galileo was sent to university in 1581 to study medicine. Medicine was not only the path to a well-paid career; it was also the most empirical and practical of all the sciences, the one least tainted by abstract theorising, and so a suitable choice for the anti-Pythagorean Vincenzo's eldest son.
LOCATION: 604

Astrology was a recognised part of respectable medicine, and astronomy and astrology were not separate disciplines, but two aspects of one enterprise.
LOCATION: 608
Stillman Drake, the greatest of English-language Galileo scholars, who wanted to claim that Galileo had learnt the experimental method from his father, pointed out that he may well have been introduced to the pendulum by his father's experiments with weights on strings, and was willing to concede that he may have started experimenting with pendulums as a young man.
LOCATION: 639