George Pólya on Galileo Galilei

“It was in Galileo's time that firearms were invented... What is the path of a cannonball? ...Characteristically, Galileo was engrossed with the problem; characteristically, he solved it. The outcome of his ingenuity we know today as the method of superposition.”

“How do heavy bodies fall? ...Galileo's investigation of dynamics was physical; Aristotle's was metaphysical. But unlike Galileo, we have the additional convenience of algebraic notation. Had it been invented in his day he would certainly have known it; almost certainly he would have been able to push his development of dynamics much farther.”