Galileo and the Doctores Parisienses

Abstract

The title of this study translates that of a note published by Antonio Favaro in 1918 in the transactions of the Accademia dei Lincei, wherein he presented his considered opinion of the value of Pierre Duhem’s researches into the ‘Parisian precursors of Galileo.’¹ Earlier, in 1916, only a few years after the appearance of Duhem’s three-volume Études sur Léonard de Vinci, Favaro had reviewed the work in Scientia and had expressed some reservations about the thesis there advanced, which advocated a strong bond of continuity between medieval and modern science.² In the 1918 note he returned to this topic and developed a number of arguments against the continuity thesis, some of which are strikingly similar to those offered in present-day debates. Since Favaro, as the editor of the National Edition of Galileo’s works, had a superlative knowledge of Galileo’s manuscripts — one that remains unequalled in extent and in detail to the present day — it will be profitable to review his arguments and evaluate them in the light of recent researches into the manuscript sources of Galileo’s early notebooks. Such is the intent of this essay.