SOURCE: "Galileo in the Present," in Homage to Galileo: Papers Presented at the Galileo Quadricentennial, University of Rochester, October 8 and 9, 1964, edited by Morton F. Kaplon, The M.I.T. Press, 1965, pp. 1-25.

In the following essay, first presented as a paper in 1964 and published in 1965, de Santillana argues that Galileo was the first to combine the study of science with the usefulness of technology, or "technique," in order to find out the "how" of things in nature.

Galileo has by now moved out of history into myth. He is more than the creator of an era. He has become a hero of civilization, the symbol of a great adventure like Prometheus, or rather like the Ulysses of Dante and Tennyson.

There was in his earlier triumph the note of divine surprise, of an incredible world opening up. There also is, later, darkness closing in on the hero. Let...