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Pansikism is the belief that all material things, however small, have an element of individual consciousness.

On the face of it, it sounds like a bizarre doctrine, but Philip Gough believes that it's better

than all the alternative theories about consciousness.

He argues that consciousness cannot be understood in physical scientific terms, and he traces

the origins of this position to the Italian polymath Galileo.

Philip Gough, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you very much, good to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on today is Galileo and consciousness.

Now Galileo is often thought of as an astronomer.

What's he got to say about consciousness?

Well Galileo is known as the father of modern science,

and I think it's because it's Galileo that really

shapes the philosophical foundations of the scientific revolution.

Galileo's declaration that mathematics was to be the language of the new science,

that the new science was to have a purely quantitative vocabulary. In many ways this is the

philosophical move that kick-starts the scientific revolution. What's less

focused on is the philosophical work Galileo had to do to get there and how as well as being a great scientist

he was also a great philosopher.

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