Abstract
It is now generally agreed that Galileo composed three Latin manuscripts while he was teaching, or preparing to teach, at the University of Pisa toward the end of the sixteenth century, in the years roughly between 1589 and 1591. One of these, MS 71, contains his earliest attempts at constructing a science of motion. It gives evidence throughout of being an original composition, revised and even recopied in places, but all of it written by Galileo in his own hand. MSS 27 and 46, which contain his logical and physical questions respectively, are also autographs, but they show numerous signs of copying. Though this fact was recognized by Antonio Favaro, the editor of the National Edition of Galileo’s works, at the end of the nineteenth century, he speculated then that both could only be student compositions. The first he assigned to the period of Galileo’s studies at the Monastery of Vallombrosa in the late 1570’s [GG9: 279]; the second he thought must have been written while Galileo was a student at the University of Pisa, dating it in 1584 and pointing to Francesco Buonamici, one of Galileo’s professors there, as its likely source [GG1: 12]. Favaro provided no direct evidence in support of either of these identifications, but there was no reason to question them and they were generally accepted among scholars for close to a century.
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References
This work has actually been in progress for two decades, though as yet its results are not widely known. The pioneering efforts of Carugo and Crombie are described in A. C. Crombie, “Sources of Galileo’s Early Natural Philosophy,” in Bonelli and Shea’s Reason, Experiment, and Mysticism in the Scientific Revolution, 157–175, 303–305. Related research, reported in fuller detail, is described in Christopher Lewis, The Merton Tradition and Kinematics in Late Sixteenth-and Early Seventeenth-Century Italy, Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1980. The translator’s early investigations are summarized in Galileo’s Early Notebooks: The Physical Questions, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977; subsequent studies are detailed in his Prelude to Galileo and Galileo and His Sources. Edwards’ transcription of the autograph of the logical questions (MS 27) on which the Latin Edition is based has, of course, made the present volume possible.
Indici e cataloghi, Nuova serie V. La collezione galileiana della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, Vol. 1. Florence: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1959, 106–107.
See Crombie, “Sources of Galileo’s Early Natural Philosophy,” 304–305, and Drake, “Galileo’s Pre-Paduan Writings: Years, Sources, Motivations,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 17 (1986), 436–437.
For a fuller examination of this question see our “Galileo’s Sources: Manuscripts or Printed Works?,” Print and Culture in the Renaissance: Essays on the Advent of Printing in Europe, eds. G. B. Tyson and Sylvia Wagonheim, Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1986, 45–54.
A. Carugo and A. C. Crombie, “The Jesuits and Galileo’s Idea of Science and of Nature,” presented at a Convegno Internazionale di Studi Galileiani entitled Novità Celesti e Crisi del Sapere and held at Pisa, Venice, Padua, and Florence on 18–23 March 1983. This statement and the summary that follows are taken from an abstract published in the Sommari degli Interventi, Florence: Banca Toscana, 1983, 7–9. A much expanded version of the paper may be found in the Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze 8.2 (1983), 3–68.
As will be seen in what follows there is good reason to believe that Vallius knew Carbone personally and even may have furnished him with copies of his lecture notes. Thus one may wonder why Vallius refers to him as “some good author” in the preface to his first volume and again as “this good man” in the preface to the second. The expressions could have been irony, but more probably are a sign that Vallius knew Carbone to be dead by the time he published his Logica and did not wish to damage his reputation. For a list of Carbone’s publications see Galileo and His Sources, 12–13 n. 23, and the essays cited in the following two notes.
J. D. Moss, “The Rhetoric Course at the Collegio Romano in the Latter Half of the Sixteenth Century,” Rhetorica 4.2 (1986), 137–151; “Aristotle’s Four Causes: Forgotten Topoi of the Italian Renaissance,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 17.1 (1987), 71–88; “Rhetorical Invention in the Italian Renaissance,” in Visions of Rhetoric: History,Theory and Criticism, ed. C. W. Kneupper, Arlington, Tex.: Rhetoric Society of America, 1987, 30–41; and “Dialectic and Rhetoric: Questions and Answers in the Copernican Revolution,” Argumentation, 5 (1990), 17–37.
J. D. Moss, “Ludovico Carbone’s Commentary on Aristotle’s De caelo,” in Nature and Scientific Method, Essays in Honor of William A. Wallace, ed. D. O. Dahlstrom, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990, 169–192.
In our “The Dating and Significance of Galileo’s Pisan Manuscripts,” Nature, Experiment, and the Sciences, eds. T. H. Levere and W. R. Shea, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990, 3–50.
In Galileo’s Early Notebooks, 21–24; Prelude to Galileo, 217–225; and Galileo and His Sources, 89–95.
BNF Cod. CL XII, 64 Theatini. Moss summarizes the contents of this manuscript in the essay cited in note 9 above.
The memoranda have been translated by I. E. Drabkin in Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy, eds. S. Drake and I. E. Drabkin, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969, 378–387.
That Galileo and Mazzoni were collaborating is clear from a letter written by Galileo to his father on November 15, 1590 (GG10: 44–45); see Prelude to Galileo, 227. Possible influences of Mazzoni on Galileo, and particularly the possibility of their joint study of Benedetti’s work, are discussed in Galileo and His Sources, 225–230.
See Essay 10, “Filippo Fantoni, Galileo Galilei’s Predecessor as Mathematics Lecturer at Pisa,” in Schmitt’s Studies in Renaissance Philosophy and Science, London: Variorum Reprints, 1981. The essay appeared originally in Science and History: Studies in Honor of Edward Rosen, published in Wroclaw in 1978, 53–62.
See the bibliography cited in Galileo and His Sources, 230–231 nn. 22, 24; also 357–358. 3’ Galileo and His Sources, 168–172, 184–202. The Jesuit philosophers may not have known of Benedetti directly, but they do cite Jean Taisnier’s plagiarism of his work, as noted on 185. There is no doubt that Clavius was acquainted with him, as detailed in our “Science and Philosophy at the Collegio Romano in the Time of Benedetti,” Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio Giovan Battista Benedetti e it Suo Tempo, Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1987, 113–126.
Galileo Studies, tr. John Mepham, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978.
La Filosophia di Francesco Buonamici, professore di Galileo a Pisa, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi Editori, 1989.
The Latin text of this passage is given in our Causality and Scientific Explanation, 2 vols., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972–1974, 1: 238 n. 110.
In his entry on Borro in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C. C. Gillispie, 16 vols., New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970–1980, 15: 45.
Information on Mazzoni supplemental to that given in n. 27 above will be found in Frederick Purnell, “Jacopo Mazzoni and Galileo,” Physis 3 (1972), 273–294.
See his “Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy,” Prismata: Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien, eds. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Salzer, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1977, 63–94. More recently Corrado Dollo has emphasized the same theme, based on his transcriptions of the lecture notes of Vallius and Vitelleschi, as he informed the author by mail in December of 1989; see his “L’Uso di Platone in Galileo,” Siculorum Gymnasium 42 (1989), 115–157, for details.
Antonio Favaro, for example, regarded the fragment as written in 1604, whereas Emil Wohlwill and Alexandre Koyré both thought it written in 1609. For more details, see Galileo and His Sources, 273, n. 105.
The confusion undoubtedly resulted from the different ways in which resolution and composition were applied in mathematics and in the natural sciences; this matter is touched on in various places in Galileo and His Sources, e.g., 119–122, 146–147, 213, 285, 302, and 308. A detailed analysis is provided in Sec. 2.7 of Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof.
Proposals regarding Galileo’s methodological innovations with the regressus are offered in Galileo and His Sources, 338–347, Prelude to Galileo, 150–156, and in Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof, Chaps. 5 and 6.
On the term progressus and its value in tracing the sources from which Galileo’s teaching derives, see Lat. Ed., 109–110 and 112–113.
In the Two Chief World Systems, GG7: 442–489, esp. 456, where he makes reference to the machina he had used to investigate the phenomena; he had proposed similar arguments in his preliminary draft, Discorso del flusso e reflusso del mare, GG5: 377–395, translated in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair, 119–133.
This is the conclusion reached by J. D. Moss after a careful analysis of all of Galileo’s references to demonstration in the context of the Copernican debates. See her “The Rhetoric of Proof in Galileo’s Writings on the Copernican System,” in Reinterpreting Galileo, ed. W. A. Wallace, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986, pp. 179204; also her earlier essay, “Galileo’s Letter to Christina: Some Rhetorical Considerations,” Renaissance Quarterly 36 (1983), 547–576.
This was the judgment, for example, of Melchior Inchofer; see GG19: 349–356.
Simplicio states this position explicitly in the Two Chief World Systems, GG7: 462.
A notable exception in Stillman Drake, who still argues for the cogency of the argument from the tides in his Telescopes, Tides and Tactics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983.
The regressus, as Galileo explained it and as it was understood by the Jesuits, required that cause and effect be convertible; see D3.3.14.
The literature in which “table-top experiments” of this type are discussed is indicated in Galileo and His Sources, 264–268. To this should be added D. K. Hill’s “A Note on a Galilean Worksheet,” Isis 70 (1979), 269–271; his “Galileo’s Work on 116v: A New Analysis,” Isis 77 (1986), 283–291; and his “Dissecting Trajectories: Galileo’s Early Experiments on Projectile Motion and the Law of Fall,” Isis 79 (1988), 646–668.
The argument is developed by Galileo in his Two New Sciences of 1638 (GG8: 273–276), but the experimental work on which the thesis is based seems to have been done many years earlier, around 1608–1609; see the literature mentioned in the previous note, plus R. H. Naylor’s “Galileo’s Method of Analysis and Synthesis,” Isis 81 (1990), 695–707.
When outlining his justification for adopting the principle of uniform acceleration on the Third Day of the Two New Sciences, Galileo uses this expression (post diuturnas mentis agitationes, GG8: 197); earlier he had used the same expression in a draft preserved in the De motu accelerato fragment, GG2: 261.
Galileo’s wording in the context of the previous note, where he speaks of “the essence of naturally accelerated motion” (essentia motus naturaliter accelerati, GG8: 197), indicates that he was claiming only to have uncovered the essential character of the motion, being aware of departures from it that would be attributable to accidental causes. Note also his reference to the “natural experiments” (naturalia experimenta) on which his reasoning is based, which would seem to suggest the free fall initiated in the table-top experiments rather than the acceleration observed on an artifact such as that down an inclined plane.
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Wallace, W.A. (1992). Introduction. In: Galileo’s Logical Treatises. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 138. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8036-6_1
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