The Galileo story is dominated by documents and events from primarily the last decade of Galileo’s life (and he lived to be 78). Even the 1610 telescopic discoveries are from the period of his middle age. An attempt to follow his career from his youth, beginning with his education in the humanities and the arts, tells a very different story, and it documents an essential role for the arts in Galileo's innovations. The most profound of these innovations was a new view of mathematics, generalized from the mathematics of the arts.

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