Download or read book Before Galileo written by John Freely and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2014-03-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Histories of modern science often begin with the heroic battle between Galileo and the Catholic Church, which sparked the Scientific Revolution and led to the world-changing discoveries of Isaac Newton. In reality, more than a millennium before the Renaissance, a succession of scholars paved the way for the discoveries for which Galileo and Newton are credited. In Before Galileo, John Freely investigates the first European scientists, many of them monks, whose influence ranged far beyond the walls of their monasteries. He shows how science and religion coexisted, and places the great discoveries of the age in their rightful context.