ABSTRACT
The leitmotif recognized in Galileo's work is the passionate fight against any kind of dogma based on authority. Only experience and careful reflection are accepted by him as criteria of truth. Nowadays it is hard for us to grasp how sinister and revolutionary such an attitude appeared at Galileo's time, when merely to doubt the truth of opinions which had no basis but authority was considered a capital crime punished accordingly. Modern science no longer traffics in the medieval notion of averages; a law that is valid is valid even if the event in question occurs only once. There are many ways in which the similarities between psychoanalytic and Aristotelian approaches, thinking, and science can be documented. Aristotle's approach to the universe that he attempted to understand was naturalistic, based almost entirely on ordinary appearances and the use of common sense. Aristotelian thinking sacrifices the understanding of processes and dynamics for statics and classifications.
