“Galileo’s Use of Medieval Thought Experiments”
https://doi.org/10.1163/EJ.9789004201767.I-233.22…
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Galileo's work prominently features thought experiments, particularly in challenging Aristotelian principles. While some scholars view these as innovative, the argument presented reflects a continuity with medieval thought traditions, suggesting Galileo strategically employed established methodologies to support his revolutionary conclusions. The research highlights both the historical significance and logical critiques of Galileo's thought experiments within the broader context of pre-modern scientific discourse.
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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 1976
IT IS now over sixty years since Ernst Cassirer claimed that there are striking similarities between Galileo's conception of scientific explanation and the theory of scientific demonstration expounded by the Paduan Aristotelian commentator Giacomo Zabarella in his monumental Opera Logica of 1578.' This claim has been elaborated by Randall, who presents Zabarella's work on scientific demonstration as the link between Galileo and a Paduan tradition stretching back to the fourteenth century: a tradition in which he detects the progressive clarification of an experimentally oriented approach to scientific inquiry involving inductive formulation and deductive testing of hypotheses. ' Randall's studies are placed in a yet wider context by Crombie in an influential work, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, in which he tentatively makes this Paduan tradition serve as a link between an experimentally oriented theory of scientific method forged in thirteenth century Oxford and fourteenth century Paris, and the theories of scientific method developed and practised by Galileo, Descartes and Bacon.3 For those who believe in continuity and gradual 1 E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophic und Wissenschaft de neveren Zeit (Berlin, 1906), 134-41. Read in conjunction with the chapter of the book devoted to Galileo's conception of science these remarks appear far more moderate than when taken out of context. Cassirer is primarily concerned to show that despite Galileo's outright rejection of the syllogistic methods of-his Aristotelian opponents, he shared with them the assumption that the goal of natural philosophy is the apprehension of the necessary connexions which underlie what is perceived by the senses. Nowhere does he actually suggest that Galileo was influenced by Zabarella, and unlike Randall he does not imply that either Zabarella or Galileo anticipated modern empiricist views on the role of inductive conjecture and experimental testing of hypotheses in scientific inquiry (views which, incidentally, Cassirer himself rejects). 2J. H. Randall, 'The development of scientific method in the school of Padua',
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The clearly recognized innovation in Galileo’s work on free fall has been a stimulus and a challenge for the history and philosophy of science. This article will analyze the experimental and theoretical aspects of Galileo’s work on free fall. It draws on several authors’ results to justify the claim that the research model established by Galileo remains valid today (Sections 2 and 3). The article draws this parallel with current science by focusing on Galileo’s method, way of considering scientific instruments, and practice of confrontation between theory and experiments. The Galilean mode of investigation can be interpreted from a variety of possible philosophical perspectives: Section 3 examines how relevant the so-called constructivist and conventionalist perspectives are to analysis of Galileo’s innovations. Section 4 discusses Galileo’s contribution to the mathematization of science and the Platonic character of his thought. Finally, the article attempts to show that Galileo’s ...
Cette étude montrera que la confirmation expérimentale des conjectures constituait chez Galilée l'objet d'un souci constant, et ce dès le début de son activité scientifique. À l'appui de cette thèse, je citerai ses premiers travaux expérimentaux et montrerai avec quelle profondeur il était capable d'analyser par lui-même ses résultats. Je démontrerai ensuite qu'il a discuté de ses résultats avec d'autres scientifiques afin de confirmer ses intuitions initiales. C'est en les consultant et en bénéficiant de leurs conseils qu'il put mener ses intuitions à leur état final. Abstract: This study aims to show that the experimental confirmation of his conjectural ideas was a constant concern for Galileo from the very beginning of his scientific activity. In order to support my view, I shall quote his early experimental work and first show the extent to which he was able to analyse his results in depth by himself. Then I shall give evidence that he discussed his results with other scientists to help confirm his initial intuitive ideas. He consulted with them and their advice helped him to come to his final conclusion regarding his insight.
In the ten years following the publication of Galileo Galilei's Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (1638), the new science of motion was intensely debated in Italy, France and northern Europe. Although Galileo's theories were interpreted and reworked in a variety of ways, it is possible to identify some crucial issues on which the attention of natural philosophers converged, namely the possibility of complementing Galileo's theory of natural acceleration with a physical explanation of gravity; the legitimacy of Galileo's methods of proof and of his theory of the composition of continuous magnitudes; and the adequacy of the experimental evidence in favor of his theory.
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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
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In order to support his new science, Galileo Galilei criticized the Aristotelianism that permeated the science of his time, by endorsing Aristotle’s traditional rival, Plato, read through the mediation of Archimedes, another scientist he valued highly. This allowed him to lay the foundations of modern science, breaking with the qualitative science of peripatetic medieval philosophy. To this purpose, he built a new methodology that is justified by a worldview based upon several ontological assumptions that outline an influential metaphysics that are pivotal to science. It is uncertain whether Galileo gave these assumptions the character of a purely methodological and necessary move; anyway, subsequently they deeply marked scientific thought, and particularly influenced scientists and philosophers who were barely aware of the methodological approach of modern science. However, it would be a mistake to transform the assumptions, that are at the basis of Galileo’s methodology, into a „t...
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The group of writings entitled De motu (or De motu antiquiora) constitutes Galileo's earliest writings on dynamics. These manuscripts are usually dated to the years 1589 to 1592, when Galileo taught mathematics at the University of Pisa. Among their characteristics, the application of dynamic principles of Archimedean hydrostatics to the problem of motion stands out, as does their anti-Aristotelian tone. This paper tries to embed these writings within the cultural context in which they were created by documenting their link (which is most evident in various polemically charged references) to the debate over the motion of the elements between Girolamo Borro and Francesco Buonamici, the two most celebrated Pisan Aristotelians of the late sixteenth century.

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