Galileo And The Great Chain Of Being

Brague observes that in ancient and medieval times, the simple question, “What is man?” was seldom thought about. Contemplating this question requires one to believe they are a self-determining being. In ancient and medieval times, people did not think about who they were or if they could change. The universe was stagnant, every being had a purpose and a place and stayed in that place. In order to believe you are a self-determining being, you must be able to reflect upon yourself. This concept did not exist in the ancient and medieval world, as one’s place in this universe was believed to be pre-determined. This comes from the overall view people had of the universe, known as The Great Chain of Being. It is an interpretation of the world that
The beginnings of these social changes are forever encapsulated in the works of this period. Galileo claims that the physical should solely be studied by means of the senses and reasoning. This opposed the natural order of the universe in his time. He was well aware that his concepts were new, in regards to his position in time. He knows that his view is challenged because people simply do not have the capacity to internalize his theories. He was suggesting that the Great Chain of Being, a divinely ordered structure, may have wrongly combined science and religion. He makes it known that physical events should be understood solely through logic, science and mathematics, and not through the divine. His goal was to reconfigure the relationship between science and religion to better understand the world, as a whole. Da Vinci’s representation of the human body takes on a scientific and humanistic approach. In the pre-modern world, the human body was not studied. There were no dissections, all that was known of this subject came from those injured on the battlefield and from animals. The human was also skipped over in most art works, as it is impossible to represent the human body without knowing its workings in full. DaVinci utilized the body in such a way that he was able to objectively study the human form. The Great Chain of Being does not allow for any self-reflection; DaVinci’s creation of anatomical sketch was novel. This drawing allowed him to further his art and properly attempt to represent the human form. Both Galileo and DaVinci’s works employ a logical method to examine the self and the