Abstract

Three main features of engineering thought have formed over the centuries: artistic, practical, and scientific. Galileo chose an approach unusual for scholastic science: technology began to depend on mathematical knowledge and models. At the same time, he criticized the craftsmens’ approach to technical activity, which overlooked scientific knowledge and the laws of nature in building machinery. Galileo’s works paved the way for the formation of engineering thinking and activity in practice as well as theory. He personified a new figure, the engineer-scientist. His geometric-kinematic theoretical schematic model of the machines was a beginning and precondition of the application of the natural scientific theory to the first special engineering science – the theory of the mechanisms and machines or kinematics. Galileo elaborated not only a new scientific methodology oriented to technical needs, but also a new philosophy of technology based on scientific knowledge.