Abstract
Our topic is Galileo’s contribution to the concept of science. For many that is summed up in the following quote from The Assayer, written in 1623.
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Notes
References will be by author and date of publication with other information where appropriate. Füll citations regarding works referred to can be found in the list of Works Consulted at the end of the book. Wherever possible I have used Drake’s translations for two reasons. First, they have become the accepted Standard English translations of Galileo’s major works. Second, I could not hope to approach the clarity of the translation nor the spirit of Galileo which Drake so effortlessly captures. References to the collected works of Galileo, Edizione Nationale [1890–1909], Ist Edition, edited by A. Favaro, will follow citations of translated texts where appropriate as (Opere, [vol., page]).
For a succinct and clear view of the problems of reconstructing history see Crombie [1963, pp. 5–7].
See also Rossi [1975] on this theme.
See Rossi [1982, p. 15], for a view of how this pragmatic conception of knowledge functioned in the thought of Bacon, Mersenne, and Hobbes. See also Dijksterhuis [ 1961, Part III, Ch. 2] for the role of technology and the notion of the control of nature in the development of modern science.
For an annotated bibliography of the most significant biographical works on Galileo see Drake [1967]. See also McMullin [1967] for a detailed general bibliography on materials pertaining to Galileo’s life and works published between 1940 and 1967.
For a more elaborate account of this episode see Drake [1978, pp.2–4]
For a detailed and comprehensive analysis of Galileo’s scientific life, with an underlying subtext that exposes his life long preoccupation with the problem of capturing mathematically the rate of fall, see Drake [1978].
This intuitive idea, is, I suspect, behind Kuhn’s [1962] notion of the role of paradigms in scientific change.
For a fuller account see Wallace [1984, pp. 126–148], Dear [ 1988 ], Carugo and Crombie [1983], Schmitt et al [1987].
Westfall [1971 p. 20] also comments on the difficulty presented by the conceptual gap between our current account of the concept of inertia and earlier Aristotelian accounts of motion.
For a detailed analysis of Galileo’s use of ratios see Mertz [1980],[1982].
For an analysis of Galileo’s early methodology and his initial use of mathematics to solve problems in physics see Carugo and Crombie [1983].
See Schmitt [1983].
See Rossi [1975,1982], Carugo and Crombie [1983], Schmitt etal [ 1987 ].
Alfonso Ingegno in Schmitt et al. [1987, p. 262] credits Galileo with at least framing the distinction between the Book of Nature and the Bible (the book of Revelation.)
See Westman [1984].
The major analysis of Galileo’s Dialogue is Shea’s [1972]. Finnochiaro’s [1980] also contains a discussion of the rhetorical structure of the Dialogue.
Contrast this with the Situation in Galileo’s early De Motu (Opere [Vol.l]) which contains a lengthy methodological introduction.
See Ariew [1986] for a useful review of the reaction scholars have had to Descartes’ supposedly embarrassing gaffe.
There are a variety of forms of arguments and logicians since Aristotle have enjoyed classifying them and evaluating their relative strengths. Regarding the merits of the form of argument Galileo portrayed as most congenial to 17th Century Aristotelians, appeal to authority (Aristotle’s), it is one of the weakest forms available. As we shall see, Galileo used a number of different techniques to expose the faulty philosophical assumptions here; despite his attacks on “Aristotelians”, Galileo is careful to distinguish them from Aristotle himself (see below).
I have a great deal of trouble with philosophers and historians who feel compelled to require every great person to submit to a logical temporal ordering of their works. There may be individuals who at the beginning of their conscious existence are capable of conceiving of the nature of their life’s work and the order in which they intend to accomplish it. But, I submit, they are not only few and far between, but they are probably not worth reading. The initial assumption that such order is not only possible, but also desirable, implies that nothing the writer learns as he or she matures has any bearing on the further development of their views. That is, the person in question does not learn from experience; this is fundamentally counter-intuitive and as I shall argue in Chapter 6, irrational.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Pitt, J.C. (1992). Galileo as Scientist and as Philosopher and the Emergence of Mathematical Physics in the 17th Century. In: Galileo, Human Knowledge, and the Book of Nature. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 50. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2620-5_1
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