Galileo’s Intellectual Revolution (Middle Period, 1610-1632) by William R. Shea
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Overview: This is a well written and philosophically literate account of Galileo’s work in the years when he “worked out the methodology of his intellectual revolution,” concentrating upon his researches in hydrostatics and astronomy and on his support for the heliocentric theory. Shea’s purpose enables him almost to ignore Galileo’s conflict with the church as merely incidental, and to place his investigations of motion in the background. The result is a book of novel but persuasive balance, which conveys a coherent and broadly convincing picture of the development of Galileo’s scientific thought. There are seven chapters, on his debt to Archimedes, work on hydrostatics, sunspots, the comets of 1618, and a detailed analysis of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (The End of the Aristotelian Cosmos; The World in Motion; and The Physical Proof from the Tides).
The emphasis throughout is on Galileo’s methodology, and Shea’s demonstration of the significance of geometry is particularly cogent. Thus, for example, Galileo is represented as declaring himself in favour of the Copernican system only after he had succeeded in using mathematics in dismantling the latest published argument against the motion of the earth, and his proof of the earth’s motion from the behaviour of the tides is presented in terms of a derivation from geometrised physical postulates. Shea enters with zest into the debate on Galileo’s Platonism, claiming that “Galilean science was not so much an experimental game as a Platonic gamble.” Shea’s research supports Alexandre Koyré’s position that “Galileo conducted most of his experiments in his head and on paper.”
Genre: Non-Fiction > History
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