Galileo's Muse (original) (raw)
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Aristotle and Galileo on Elemental Motion. A Historical and Philosophical Analysis, 2021
"De Motu Antiquiora" is the title of several writings written by the young Galileo, gathered in volume n. 71 of the “Manoscritti Galileiani” and preserved in Florence National Library. In these texts, dating back to the period 1589-92 when Galileo was in Pisa, he addresses the problem of motion of simple bodies (traditionally: water, air, earth and fire) and their tendency to move toward their natural places, an Aristotelian theory that has been the subject of a large debate in history of science and natural philosophy. Galileo quotes a specific passage from Aristotle’s Physics (VIII, 4. 255b15-17) in which the Stagirite tries to demonstrate that light and heavy bodies are ‘moved by something’, like all the other things that are in motion (this it is in fact the general thesis that is supported in chapter 4). These bodies for Aristotle are moved either by their very essence (nature), which causes them to go up or down, or by “what removes the hindrance” (255b15-256a). Galileo points out how every day we observe with our senses that the places towards which heavy things tend are those that approach the center of the world, while light things are the farthest from the center. Galileo does not doubt that nature has determined these places but wonders why nature ‘chose’ this arrangement and not another, stating that the philosophers did not speak of the reason why this happens, even if Aristotle identifies two causes. For many interpreters, the Aristotelian question of the motion of simple bodies has also become crucial in determining the order of the writings of the De Motu. Given the interpretative difficulties related to Galileo’s text, the aim of this work is not to reconcile the different views: it is not possible, in fact, either to trace Galileo back to Aristotle’s physics (as the continuists would support), or to stress excessively the discontinuities between the two thinkers. The purpose of this study is instead to understand, without adopting pre-established interpretative schemes, how both these views can coexist in the young Galileo and establish to what extent Aristotle’s Physics (in particular, the section on motion of the simple bodies contained in book VIII) was important at the beginning of his philosophical and scientific training.
The Origin of Modern Physical Science: Some Passages from A Theory of Wonder
Filozoficzne Aspekty Genezy, 2022
The triumph of the Copernican revolution is commonly associated with the introduction of the scientific method, mainly by Galileo. The nature of science presumably depends on the way observation passes judgment on theory. This is how, according to empiricism, the practice of science improves our worldviews. Some historically inclined philosophers of science, most notably Kuhn and Feyerabend, have insisted on paying attention to what Galileo actually said and did. Shockingly, he drives a dagger through the heart of empiricism: observation does not have such priority over theory, because observation itself assumes theory. This is what he argues when dismantling Aristotle's Tower Argument, according to which a stone dropped from a tower falls straight down to the base of the tower. If this is so, the Earth cannot rotate, for it would carry the tower with it, making our observation of the stone's flight wildly different. According to Galileo, to conclude that the stone really falls vertically requires the assumption that the Earth does not movethe theoretical issue in question. Given Galileo's proper understanding of the nature of science, I view Feyerabend's principle of proliferation as the realization that a good strategy for the latter is to elaborate radical alternatives and, on their basis, reconsider what counts as evidence. Moreover, a science produced by human brains should be analyzed on the basis of evolutionary theory and neuroscience. From that perspective, we may be able to defend a sensible notion of relativism. These considerations have led me to the main arguments of my new book, A Theory of Wonder: Evolution, Brain, and the Radical Nature of Science (Philosophy of Science,
Galileo and the Scientific Revolution
Galilaeana Journal of Galilean Studies, 2011
particular effects...» 3 It might even be argued that this is the best that can be said in favour of Galileo: his importance lay not in establishing a new way of philosophizing but in producing a range of new observations and new arguments which pointed the way to a new philosophy, and enabled others to accomplish it. It seems to me, however, that there is another way to sum up Galileo's importance in the history of science. I want to suggest that Galileo's significance for the Scientific Revolution rests upon something as wide ranging and expansive as the experimental method or the mathematization of the world picture but which, as far as I know, has not yet been properly acknowledged by Galileo scholars, although it is certainly implicit in many of their commentaries. What I have in mind might be referred to as «Galileo's science of motion», but by this, I do not simply mean the «new science» of motion which he expounded in the Discorsi. Galileo was one of the seminal figures of the Scientific Revolution, I want to suggest, because he clearly showed his contemporaries how all physical phenomena might be explained in terms of bodies in motion, and nothing more. 4 At a time when the learned all over Europe were recognising that Aristotelianism could no longer be sustained, it became increasingly urgent to establish a new physics on new principles. Although Galileo never succeeded in writing his book on the System of the World which he announces as forthcoming in his Siderius Nuncius, 5 his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del Mondo, supplemented