the world. Galileo's discovery of the continuity between the earth and the universe alienates people from their world by showing that our earth-centered view of the world is illusory, that the sun does not rise and set as it appears to. What set Galileo apart from other heliocentric theorists is that he proved that heliocentric theories were not merely useful instruments for predicting/explaining data but proper descriptions of reality. Ironically, the outcome of the scientific revolution is that current theories have become so bizarre and that perhaps no one can grasp the world they describe. They have turned out to be useful primarily as instruments, after having shattered our previous understanding of the world. Meanwhile, science now further alienates us from the world by unleashing processes on earth that previously occurred only further out in the universe. We have found an archimedean point to move the world, but only by losing our place in it. The consequence of this world alienation for philosophy has been an intense focus on the self, the one remaining sphere of certainty and knowledge. The world described by science cannot be known, or not with certainty, but the self, Descartes and other moderns thought, could be known. Though his cogito ergo sum was anticipated by Augustine, his dubito ergo sum is original and a hallmark of modernity: beginning from doubt. The notion of common sense as a sense in which the other five were fitted to a common world ceded to a conception of common sense as an inner faculty with no relationship to the world, and the assumption that all humans had faculties like this in common became necessary to get theories going, but without the assumption of a common world, the assumption of faculties in common lost some warrant. Galileo's discoveries also have implications for the 'vita activa' and 'contemplativa'. That he made the discoveries with a telescope, with a product of human work, signals an important change in science. Knowledge is acquired not simply by thinking, but by making. Homo faber and the life of work were thus exalted over the life of contemplation. Indeed, the model of scientific inquiry, the experiment, is one in which the scientist unleashes a process by which the scientist produces results. This way of doing science is naturally understood in terms of work processes. The philosopher has consequently been relegated to a position of relative insignificance,