SOURCE: "The Effectiveness of Galileo's Work," in Galileo Studies: Personality, Tradition, and Revolution, The University of Michigan Press, 1970, pp. 95-122.

In the following excerpt, Drake asserts that Galileo was revolutionary for being the first to integrate the heretofore separate disciplines of mathematics, physics, and astronomy in scientific thought.

Until the present century it was customary to call Galileo the founder of modern physical science. Ancient science was thought of as having ended with the decline of Greek civilization, and no real contribution to scientific thought was known to have been made during the long ensuing period to the late Renaissance. The seemingly abrupt emergence of many recognizably modern scientific concepts early in the seventeenth century thus appeared to have been a true revolution in human thought. In that scientific revolution, Galileo appeared as the prime mover. The persecution that he suffered as a result of his active propagation...