" According to the traditional history of science, Galileo was a man of unparalleled originality. He was, supposedly, the first person to show that objects of different weights fall at the same speed, the first to claim that vacuums could really exist and the first to realise projectiles move in curves. He rejected Aristotle when everyone else followed him slavishly. It is said that he proved Copernicus was right and that the Inquisition cast him into prison as a result. As it turns out, none of these things is exactly true. Galileo never proved heliocentricism (as we have already seen, it was Kepler who effectively did that) and his trial before the Inquisition was based more on politics than science. Galileo’s scientific achievement was solidly based on the natural philosophy that came before him. Appreciating that fact should not diminish our admiration of his genius. While almost all his theories can be traced back to earlier sources, he was the first to mould them into a coherent whole and the first to show how they could be experimentally demonstrated. In that sense, the long road to modern science really does start with him. "

― James Hannam , God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science