This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'Galileo gambit'. Perhaps the best way to describe the fallacy is as an association fallacy or a faulty analogy. The Galileo gambit fallacy is committed by those theories that contradict the mainstream scientific consensus. The Galileo gambit is often used to suggest that science is not open to criticism, but nothing could be further from the truth. No one is more open (...) to criticism than the scientist; that is how we make sure we are not wrong and get closer to the truth. Persons who are making the Galileo gambit in recent times are Rupert Sheldrake and his morphic resonance/fields, Bigfoot believers, UFO enthusiasts, creationists, conspiracy theorists of all stripes, and people who deny climate change. (shrink)

Summary Descartes' two treatises of corpuscular-mechanical natural philosophy—Le Monde (1633) and the Principia philosophiae (1644/1647)—differ in many respects. Some historians of science have studied their significantly different theories of matter and elements. Others have routinely noted that the Principia cites much evidence regarding magnetism, sunspots, novae and variable stars which is absent from Le Monde. We argue that far from being unrelated or even opposed intellectual practices inside the Principles, Descartes' moves in matter and element theory and his adoption of (...) wide swathes of novel matters of fact, were two sides of the same coin—that coin being his strategies for improving the systematic power, scope and consistency of the natural philosophy presented in the Principia. We find that Descartes' systematising strategy centred upon weaving ranges of novel matters of fact into explanatory and descriptive narratives with cosmic sweep and radical realist Copernican intent. Gambits of this type have recently been labelled as ‘cosmographical’ (the natural philosophical relating of heavens and earth in contemporary usage). Realist Copernican natural philosophers, from Copernicus himself, through Bruno, Gilbert and Galileo did this to varying degrees; but, we suggest, Descartes presented in Books III and IV of the Principia the most elaborate and strategically planned version of it, underneath the ostensible textbook style of the work. (shrink)

This classic work proves the truth of the Copernican system over the Ptolemaic one, that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

V pričujočem sklopu so prevedena izbrana pisma Galilea Galileija ter njegovih korespondentov o problematiki razmerja med naravoslovnim oz. filozofskim raziskovanjem in Svetim pismom in s to problematiko povezani dokumenti iz Vatikanskega tajnega arhiva iz obdobja t. i. Galileijevega prvega procesa. Sklop zaključuje Galileijeva Razprava o morskem plimovanju, ki vsebinsko sicer ne zadeva omenjene problematike, je pa nastala kot posledica takratnega dogajanja. Vsa pisma so prevedena po kritični izdaji Galileijevih del, Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, ur. Antonio Favaro, Barbèra, Firence (...) 1890–1909. Dokumenti iz Vatikanskega tajnega arhiva so prevedeni po kritični izdaji I documenti vaticani del processo di Galileo Galilei. Nuova edizione accresciuta, rivista e annotata da Sergio Pagano, Archivio segreto vaticano, Mesto Vatikan 2009. Prevod Mojca Mihelič. Besedili Galileo Galilei poklican h kardinalu Bellarminu in Ukor kardinala Roberta Bellarmina Galileu Galileiju je prevedel Gašper Kvartič. Opombe in komentarji Matjaž Vesel in Mojca Mihelič. (shrink)

FIRST DAY INTERLOCUTORS: SALVIATI, SA- GREDO AND SIMPLICIO ALV. The constant activity which you Venetians display in your famous arsenal suggests to the ...

SummaryenPhilosophical debates concerning the existence of entities postulated in scientific explanations have always characterized the most significant revolutions in the history of physics.Scientific realism — meant here as the doctrine according to which (i) theoretical entities in a mature science typically refer and (ii) the laws of a theory in a mature science are approximately true — can be given a clearer, pragmatic interpretation by suggesting sufficient conditions for both (i) and (ii).(i) Following I. Hacking, (a) manipulability and (b) measurability (...) of a theoretical entity T are each considered sufficient conditions for believing in the existence of T.(ii) The problem of verisimilitude or ‘approximate truth’ is restated in terms of sufficient conditions for “a good approximation of a model”, a problem yet to be studied; with this regard, N. Cartwright's approach to models is briefly criticized.The relevance of the so called “survivability argument”, put forth against the realist's claim that only philosophical realism can explain the success of science, is evaluated in the conclusion. RésuméfrLes débats philosophiques concernant l'existence des entités postulées dans les explications scientifiques ont toujours caractérisé les revolutions les plus significatives dans l'histoire de la physique. On peut donner au réalisme scientifique — entendu ici comme la doctrine selon laquelle (i) les entités théoriques d'une science mature ont typiquement une référence et (ii) les lois d'une théorie appartenant à une science mature sont approximativement vraies — une interprétation plus claire, pragmatique en suggérant des conditions suffisantes pour (i) et (ii).(i) D'après I. Hacking, (a) manipulabilityé et (b) mesurabilité d'une entité théorique T sont considérées toutes deux comme des conditions suffisantes pour croire en l'existence de T.(ii) Le problème de la vérisimilitude ou de la ‘vérité approchée’ est reformulé en termes de conditions suffisantes pour une «bonne approximation d'un modèle», un problème qui est encore àétudier; dans cette perspective, la manière dont N. Cartwright aborde les modèles est brièvement critiqueée.En conclusion, est évaluée la pertinence de ce qui est appelé l'«argument de la capaciteé a survivre» avancé contre la prétention réaliste que seul le réalisme philosophique peut expliquer le succès de la science. ZusammenfassungdePhilosophische Auseinandersetzungen, die die Existenz von in den wissenschaftlichen Erklärungen postulierten Entitäten betreffen, haben immer die wichtigsten Revolutionen in der Geschichte der Physik charakterisiert. Unter wissenschaftlichem Realismus verstehe ich die Lehre, wonach (i) die theoretischen Entitäten einer reifen Wissenschaft typisch eine Referenz haben und (ii) die Gesetze einer zu einer reifen Wissenschaft gehörigen Theorie approximativ wahr sind. Man kann dem wissenschaftlichen Realismus eine klarere, pragmatische Interpretation geben, indem man hinreichende Bedingungen für (i) und (ii) angibt.(i) Nach I. Hacking sind (a) Manipulierbarkeit und (b) Messbarkeit einer theoretischen Entität T hinreichende Bedingungen, um an die Existenz von T zu glauben.(ii) Das Problem der Wahrheitsnähe oder der ‘approximativen Wahrheit’ wird umformuliert, indem wir nach den hinreichenden Bedingungen für eine «gute Approximation eines Modelles» fragen — ein Problem, das noch zu untersuchen bleibt. In dieser Hinsicht wird N. Cartwrights Art, Modelle anzugehen, kurz kritisiert.Zum Schluss wird die Relevanz des sog. «Überlebensargumentes» beurteilt, das gegen die Behauptung des Realisten, dass allein der philosophische Realismus den Erfolg der Wissenschaft zu erklären vermag, ins Feld geführt wird. (shrink)

For many years the intellectual activities of the Society of Jesus were dismissed as wholly conservative, as their Ratio studiorum clung to a Ptolemaic–Aristotelian world‐picture despite the rising...

We interviewed Galileo Morandi, a young Italian architect working in a research project on architecture and new technologies and author of several publications about the relation between city, territory and project. The discussion starts and finishes in a place where Morandi studied and worked, Dubai – example of a city in rapid growth and in its way iconic representation of the new globalized cities – passing through Milan and Los Angeles, the new Chinese town and a village in the (...) mountains. The role played by city plans allows to discuss the contemporary city between an architectural perspective and a political awareness. The result is a first partial experiment to connect different urban perspectives. (shrink)

Francesco Valerio Tommasi - Rhetoric & Dialectic in the Time of Galileo - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 358-359 Jean Dietz Moss and William A. Wallace. Rhetoric & Dialectic in the Time of Galileo. Washington, D.C.:The Catholic University of America Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 438. Cloth, $69.95. "The setting for this book is Northern Italy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a time when arguments were more (...) than entertaining verbal duels, where they might mean death or imprisonment for the orator or the author" . It defines the background in which the case of Galileo takes place, while delving into the scientific constitution of rhetoric and dialectic, the disciplines that.. (shrink)

: Marin Mersenne was central to the new mathematical approach to nature in Paris in the 1630s and 1640s. Intellectually, he was one of the most enthusiastic practitioners of that program, and published a number of influential books in those important decades. But Mersenne started his career in a rather different way. In the early 1620s, Mersenne was known in Paris primarily as a writer on religious topics, and a staunch defender of Aristotle against attacks by those who would replace (...) him by a new philosophy. In this essay, I would like to examine Mersenne's changing attitude toward Galileo. In the early 1620s, Mersenne lists Galileo among the innovators in natural philosophy whose views should be rejected. However, by the early 1630s, less than a decade later, Mersenne has become one of Galileo's most ardent supporters. How, then, did Mersenne learn to love Galileo? (shrink)

Still today it remains unclear whether Galileo ever climbed the leaning tower of Pisa in order to drop bodies from its top. Some believe that he established the principle of equal speeds for falling bodies by means of an ingenious thought experiment. However, the reconstruction of that thought experiment circulating in the philosophical literature is no more than a cartoon. In this paper I will tell the story of the thought processes behind the cartoon.Keywords: Galileo Galilei; Thought experiment; (...) Falling bodies. (shrink)

Philosophers accept the deflationary package when they maintain that moral propositional content, properties, facts, and truth admit of a deflationary treatment. Expressivists often present their position as if it were tailor made for the appropriation of the deflationary package, maintaining that adopting it would allow them to say just about everything that moral realists do without compromising their expressivism. It is not, however, easy to know whether this is true, as expressivists have said very little about what a deflationary account (...) of moral properties would be. The project of this essay is to articulate such an account, which takes its inspiration from recent discussions about deflationism about truth, and to argue that expressivism does not fit well with it. The overall conclusion is that combining expressivism with deflationism is more challenging than many have assumed. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper contains two main sections. In the first I suggest a mechanism of interpretation, based on a distinction between two aspects of meaning, analyzed using two kinds of rhetorical-poetical constructions:tropesto explore the linguistic relations—metaphors, metonyms, synecdoches, etc.—that endow terms with content, andtopicsto account for the structuring function of key expressions, which enables the recognition and adjudication of phrases, arguments, texts, genres, etc. In the second section I substantiate my claims by demonstrating how new light is shed on (...) class='Hi'>Galileo Galilei's neglected and obscureDe Motuif these two aspects of the meaning of its central theoretical terms are taken into consideration; interpreted through this approach it is revealed as a text revolutionary in its ideas, while the communicative efficacy of its continuous use of the traditional terminology is unveiled. (shrink)

A document discovered in the Roman archives of the Jesuits sheds new light on the involvement of the Jesuit mathematician Christoph Scheiner in the trial of Galileo. The document suggests that Scheiner did not initiate the 1632–33 proceedings against Galileo, despite a long suspicion of his role in the events leading to Galileo’s condemnation, abjuration, and house arrest. An exploration of the contrasting conceptions of the scientific enterprise competing for hegemony within the Society of Jesus at the (...) time of the trial leads to the development of a model of scientific exchange based on money rather than gift giving. (shrink)

All too often, historians of the ‘Galileo Affair’ fail to recognize the dynamic – indeed, tumultuous – nature of the political landscape surrounding Galileo’s condemnation and the events leading to it. This was a landscape rent by the Thirty Years War, which dominated the affairs of Europe’s rulers, including Galileo’s patrons. In fact, Galileo’s publication of the Dialogo in 1632 could not have come at a more ill-advised moment: in the aftermath of the battle of Breitenfeld, (...) the nadir of Catholicism in Germany. Blame for this calamitous defeat fell on Galileo’s most important protector, Pope Urban VIII. Thus, when Galileo’s book appeared, Galileo became a useful example by which Urban could consolidate his severely weakened position. The Pope carefully crafted the public image of an unusual trial, at the expense of his old friend. Certainly, Galileo’s trial resulted from profound intellectual and political tensions that pervaded early modern Rome, but it must also be understood in light of the European exigencies of the moment. (shrink)

In the ten years following the publication of Galileo Galilei's Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze , 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.Through his published works and his correspondence, Marin Mersenne contributed in a significant way to each of these discussions. In the following, I shall provide a sketch of Mersenne's multiple engagement with the new science of motion, while trying to account for his growing skepticism concerning Galileo's law of free fall. Whereas in the 1630s, Mersenne still firmly believed in the validity of this law and tried to devise experimental and mathematical proofs in its favor, in the 1640s he developed serious doubts regarding the possibility of constructing an exact science of motion. As we shall see, Mersenne's evolving attitude sheds an interesting light on his views concerning the relation between physics and mathematics.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------. (shrink)

A companion volume to On Understanding Understanding, this second edition incorporates corrections to the previous text and includes new readings. The works collected in this volume are mainly from the British Empiricists. The breadth of the selection is not so diverse that the pieces cannot be readily understood by a newcomer to Epistemology, they have a logical progression of development (from Locke to Berkeley to Hume), and all of the philosophers whose work is represented have had great influence on contemporary (...) Anglo-American philosophy. In the Introduction, Potter sets the selections in their historical context and urges the readers to form their own viewpoint in terms of the period's contribution to the advancement of culture, politics, and society. He gives a concise summary of the Enlightenment period, demonstrating how and why Rationalism and Empiricism came about, and challenges the reader not to simply note the points of disparity between the two schools, but to notice the similarities of their common assumptions - both substantive and methodological. Readings in Epistemology, Second Edition is an excellent classroom tool. A biographical note on the philosopher, and list of suggested books for further study, heads each of the readings. Study Questions which stimulate discussion, are at the end of each piece. (shrink)

Proceedings of the 1978 Pisa, Italy, September 4-8, 1978 Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science.