The Primacy of Reasoning: The Logical Character of Galileo’s Methodology

Abstract

It has turned out (Chapter 2) that it is possible to reconstruct the whole Dialogue from the point of view of the internal relationships among the propositions it contains. From this point of view the proposition that the earth moves turns out to be the crucial one in the sense that the whole book is a complex argument of which it is the conclusion. This is the logical point of view, namely the point of view of reasoning or logical practice. It should also be noticed that the methodological analysis of the Dialogue showed that the topic of logic and reasoning was one of the most frequent ones; in fact, the number of its discussions was exceeded only by the topic of experience, the excess being merely one. In other words logic and reasoning are one of the central methodological topics in the Dialogue. Because of these two ‘logical’ features of the Dialogue, it will be useful to inquire whether or to what extent it is possible to interpret the other methodological topics in terms of logic and reasoning, namely to what extent one can reduce the book’s methodological discussions to discussions concerning logic and reasoning.