Bologna towers height
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Galileo's Predecessors
Popular Galilean biographies portray Galileo as a lone star in a dark world. We are left to believe that he had no contemporaries or predecessors who were worthy of mention. This is not true. In the 1630's Galileo had devised a brilliant experiment to prove the law of free fall using an inclined plane. But what he had really done is prove a law that had been taught in Jesuit schools across Europe for over a half century, and one that Galileo had accepted as true for 30 years. A Roman Catholic priest, Domingo deSoto had actually described the correct law of free fall in a textbook published 75 years before Galileo's famous experiment. The popular textbook had gone through 8 printings before Galileo finished university in Pisa. Galileo's Battle for the Heavens oversimplified Galileo's inclined plane experiment by repeating an old myth that Galileo had 'discovered by experiment' the law of free fall. There was no mention in the program of any preceding work.
The companion site also leaves the impression that the world had to wait for Galileo to perform s
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Galileo's Contemporaries
Galileo biographies leave the impression that Galileo's science was the only important science of his day. This is not true. His contemporaries were responsible for fundamental philosophical works that guided the future of chemistry and physics, several medical breakthroughs, the formation of the earliest scientific societies, the birth of brand new sciences and important early works on chemistry, magnetism, hydrology and electricity (see Galileo-Contemporaries-Timeline). They even made critical contributions to the technology of the telescope and the cosmology of planetary models (areas typically associated with Galileo). Many of these contemporaries were church scientists. This is not supposed to be. Galileo's clash with the church is often presented as a clash between the church and science (see Galileo's Battle for the Heavens).
Since Galileo had many important contemporaries, where do we start? One place might be with the contemporaries that were being cited in the following century. The word cloud above is based on the 22 most cited scientists fro
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Towers of Bologna
Medieval structures in Bologna, Italy
The Towers of Bologna are a group of medieval structures in Bologna, Italy. The two most prominent ones remaining, known as the Two Towers, are a landmark of the city.
History
Between the 12th and the 13th century, Bologna was a city full of towers. Almost all the towers were tall (the highest being 97 metres (318.2 ft)), defensive stone towers. Besides the towers, there are still some fortified gateways (torresotti) that correspond to the gates of the 12th-century city wall (Mura dei torresotti or Cerchia dei Mille), which itself has been almost completely destroyed.
The reasons for the construction of so many towers are not clear. One hypothesis is that the richest families used them for offensive/defensive purposes during the period of the Investiture Controversy.
In the 13th century, many towers were taken down or demolished, and others simply collapsed. Many towers have subsequently been utilized in one way or the other: as prison, city tower, shop or residential building. Still, the
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