GALILEO

"Thirdly, the historical circumstances of Galileo's time and his own personal inclinations made Galileo into a kind of philosopher. Of course, he was not a systematic metaphysician who speculated about the eternal problems of being and nothingness. Instead he was a concrete-oriented critical thinker like Socrates, with the difference that whereas Socrates dealt with moral or ethical questions of good or evil and the meaning of life, Galileo dealt with the epistemological and methodical questions about the nature of truth and knowledge and the truth and knowledge of nature."