Abstract

In this contribution I intend to reconstruct and evaluate one of Galileo's famous arguments given in the Discorsi against a well-entrenched thesis of Aristotelian physics. It will be shown that Galileo's reduction-to-the-absurd type of counterargument is, although seemingly cogent, after all fallacious. I ascribe Galileo's committing of this fallacy to his looking at the Aristotelian physics through the (Kuhnian type) paradigmatic “spectacles” of his own new physics.