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When most people think of Galileo their minds are drawn to his development of the telescope, but they ignore the previous forty six years and the following thirty one years of his life. From a young age, Galileo’s father, Vicenzo Galilei, pushed him towards further knowledge. This is not to say that without his father, he would not have ended up accomplishing the same things he did, but his presence sure didn’t hurt. Galileo shared a certain philosophy with his father, which he summed up when he said “It appears to me that those who rely simply on the weight of authority to prove any assertion, without searching out the arguments to support it, act absurdly. I wish to question freely and to answer freely without any sort of adulation. That well becomes any who are sincere in the search for truth.” At the age of forty six, Galileo developed the telescope and used it to see various things such as “mountains on the moon” and “the moons of Jupiter”. Not only did he name the moons, but he did so in a very intelligent manner. At this point Galileo proved that he was not only “book smart” and good at mathematics, physics, and astronomy, but he also showed his “street smarts”. Naming the moons of Jupiter after the Medici family granted him a promotion to a more prestigious work position. I agree with Galileo’s statement that “Scripture cannot contradict what we see in nature, so scripture, written for the business of saving souls and readable by everybody, sometimes is metaphorical in describing nature.” The use and placement of the word “business” is very true. I believe that some churches are used for monetary benefit more so than religious preaching. This statement was very bold to say during the times when religion ruled basically everything and there was no separation of church and state. Galileo was never afraid to say or write something that he truly believed, even if it was going to result in his imprisonment. One example of this is when he mocked the Pope in his book //Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World-Ptolemaic and Copernican//. The product of this was the forced stop of publication and indefinite imprisonment, which was later reduced to home confinement for life. Fowler presents Galileo’s life in the way it should be done. He does not portray him as a “criminal” who was out to prove the church wrong and provoke arguments. Instead, he represents him as a man that was in search of true knowledge and would not let anyone stand in the way of what he believed.