Abstract
The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was rooted in the Italian Renaissance, and was undoubtedly initiated by Galileo. Yet, after Galileo’s death, Italy ceased to be the main centre of this revolution and the focus of scientific activity moved to the other side of the Alps.
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Notes
One can find this view in many works on the popular and scholarly level alike. Let me quote three very different ones: i. TT. ii. Indro Montanelli and Roberto Gervaso, L’Italia del Seicento (Milan: Rizzoli, 1969); this is a popular book of Italian history enjoying very large sales and emphasising the responsibility of the Church (see p. 310). iii. The article written by A. Natucci on Vincenzo Viviani in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 14: 48–50 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976).
A documentary history of Galileo’s trial, presenting the translation into English of the pertinent documents, was recently published by Maurice A. Finocchiaro under the title The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (Berkeley, etc.: Univ. of California Press, 1989).
In addition to TT, an encompassing study of Tuscan science after Galileo is Raffaello Caverni, Storia del metodo sperimentale in Italia, 6 vols. (Florence, 1891–1900. Reprinted, Bologna: Forni, 1970). Other useful works are: Angelo Fabroni, Lettere inedite di uomini illustri, 2 vols. (Florence, 1773–75); Giorgio Abetti and Pietro Pagnini (eds.), Le Opere dei discepoli di Galileo Galilei, Edizione nazionale, Vol. I: L’Academia del Cimento, Parte prima (Florence: S. A. G. Barbèra, 1942); in the same series: Paolo Galluzzi e Maurizio Torrini, Carteggio, 2 vols. (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1975–84). Celebrazione dell’Accademia del Cimento nel tricentenario della fondazione (Pisa: Domus Galilaeana, 1958); W. E. Knowles Middleton, The Experimenters: A Study of the Accademia del Cimento (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1971); Gino Arrighi et al., La scuola galileiana: prospettive di ricerca (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979); Paolo Galluzzi, ‘L’Accademia del Cimento: ‘gusti’ del principe, filosofia e ideologia dell’ esperimento,’ Quaderni storici, N. 48, Anno 16, Fasc. 3, (1981), pp. 788–844.
Gal. MSS 275–286.
OG 19: 322, 283; the sentence: 402–406. Translated by Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1955), respectively pp. 126, 293, 306–10.
Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a’ due nuove scienze… (Leyden, 1638). OG 8. There are several translations into English. I used Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1914). On the relations between Galileo and the Medici, see my ‘Galileo as a Politician,’ Sudhoffs Archiv 72 (1988), pp. 69–82.
Renieri was entrusted by Galileo with the task of drawing up the tables of Jupiter’s moons, and King Louis’s counsellor, Baidassar de Monconys, records in his diary in 1646, after having visited Torricelli, that Torricelli occupied himself with astronomy and cosmology. See Opere di Evangelista Torricelli, edited by Gino Loria and Giuseppe Vassura, 4 vols., Vols. I–III (Faenza: Montanari, 1919), Vol. IV (Faenza: Lega, 1944), 4:84–85.
Galluzzi & Torrini, Carteggio 1: 122–3. The theological implications of Galileo’s atomistic views are presented by Pietro Redondi, Galileo Heretic, translated by Raymond Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987). Redondi claims that Galileo’s theory of matter, as presented in his Assayer (1623), — rather than his campaign for Copernicanism — was the main cause of his future misfortune, since it brought into question the sacrament of the Eucharist.
Evangelista Torricelli, Opera geometrica (Florence, 1644). On the inner front page of this work, the title is given as Magni Ducis Mathematico. Paolo Galluzzi, ‘Vecchie e nuove prospettive torricelliane,’ in G. Arrighi et al., La scuola galileiana, 13–51, p. 46. On Galileo’s title, see my ‘Galileo as a Politician’ p. 75.
Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell’Accademia del Cimento sotto la protezione del Serenissimo Principe Leopoldo di Toscana e deseritte dal segretario di essa Accademia (Florence, 1667). Translated into English by Middleton in The Experimenters.
On the Lincean see Stillman Drake, ‘The Accademia dei Lincei,’ Science, 151 (1966), pp. 1194–1200.
The diaries of the academy, Gal. MSS 260, 261, 262. On Leopold’s role in the Academy, see Middleton, The Experimenters, pp. 56–61.
If Dati was not a member, he at least suggested a number of experiments to the Academy and also published the description of the Torricellian experiment under the pseudonym of Timauro Antiate, in a work entitled Lettera a Filaleti (Florence, 1663). On the tense relations in the Academy, see Galluzzi, ‘L’Accademia del Cimento,’ pp. 819–23. The prince acknowledged that the antagonism in the Academy hindered its work: Middleton, ‘The Experimenters,’ p. 316.
Gal. MSS 259 to 274 and 290 to 307.
Gal. MSS 271–274. This work is outlined in TT 1: 382–404 and documented in TT 2–2, pp. 737—800; cf. also Middleton, The Experimenters, pp. 256–62;
Albert Van Helden, “The Accademia del Cimento and Saturn’s Rings,” Physis 15 (1973), pp. 237–59.
TT 1: 418; The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, Edited and Translated by A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, Vol. IV (Madison, Milwaukee and London: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1967), p. 248.
Galileo Galilei, Dialogo … sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico e copernicano (Florence, 1632); OG, 7. The most recent translation into English I know of is by Stillman Drake, under the title Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems — Ptolemaic and Copernican (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1962).
To the best of my knowledge the only research carried out so far in this direction is by Adriano Prosperi, ‘L’Inquisizione fiorentina al tempo di Galilei,’ in Paolo Galluzzi (ed.), Novità celesti e crisi del sapere, atti del convegno internazionale di studi galileiani, Supplemento agli Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Fasc. 2, Monografia 7 (1983), pp. 316–325. Prosperi consulted the archives of the Florentine Inquisition and found that many documents which might have been relevant to Galileo had disappeared. The remaining material concerning Galileo is too slight to allow any conclusions to be drawn.
OG 18:372.
TT 1:399.
TT 1: 124. Antonio Favaro, ‘Documenti inediti per la storia dei manoscritti Galileiani nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze,’ Bullettino di Bibliografia e di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche e Fisiche 18 (1885), pp. 1–112
TT 1: 124. Antonio Favaro, ‘Documenti inediti per la storia dei manoscritti Galileiani nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze,’ Bullettino di Bibliografia e di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche e Fisiche 18 (1885) 151–230
TT 1: 124. Antonio Favaro, ‘Documenti inediti per la storia dei manoscritti Galileiani nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze,’ Bullettino di Bibliografia e di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche e Fisiche 18 (1885) pp. 56–57.
Galluzzi, ‘L’Accademia del Cimento,’ p. 823.
A brief outline of the anti-Galilean wave at the end of the century is presented by Redondi, Galileo Heretic, pp. 319–20.
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Lettera del movimento della cometa apparsa il mese di decembre del 1664 (Pisa, 1665), and Theoricae mediceorum planetarum ex causis physicis deducta (Florence, 1666). The first work was published under the pseudonym of Pier Maria Mutolo.
TT 1: 385.
In a letter published by Tullio Derenzini in ‘Alcune lettere di Giovanni Alfonso Borelli ad Alessandro Marchetti,’ Physis 1 (1959), pp. 224–43
In a letter published by Tullio Derenzini in ‘Alcune lettere di Giovanni Alfonso Borelli ad Alessandro Marchetti,’ Physis 1 (1959), pp. 233.
All the existing drafts of the Saggi, with the notes of the referees, have been published in Abetti & Pagnini, (eds.), Le Opere dei discepoli di G. Galilei.
The view presenting Galileo as an empiricist was challenged by Alexandre Koyré in his Études Galiléennes (Paris: Hermann, 1939, 1966), translated into English by John Mepham under the title Galileo Studies (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1978). I discussed the role of experiment in Galileo’s work in my ‘The Role of Experiment in Galileo’s Physics,’ Archive for History of Exact Sciences 23 (1980), pp. 227–52.
Redi’s result was presented in his Esperienze intorno alia generazione degl’insetti (Florence, 1668). Redi still thought that there was spontaneous generation in oak galls. It was left to Malpighi to disprove this three decades later.
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Segre, M. (1991). Science at the Tuscan Court, 1642–1667. In: Unguru, S. (eds) Physics, Cosmology and Astronomy, 1300–1700: Tension and Accommodation. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 126. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3342-5_12
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