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Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science GALILEO'S LOGIC OF DISCOVERY AND PROOF BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University ofNew York VOLUME 137 WILLIAM A. WALLACE University of Maryland at College Park GALILEO'S LOGIC OF DISCOVERY AND PROOF The Background, Content, and Use 0/ His Appropriated Treatises on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wallace, William A. Ga I i I eo' slog i c of discovery and of proof : the background, content, and use of his appropriated treatises on Aristotle's Posterior analytics I William A. Wallace. p. cm. -- (Boston studies in the phi losophy of science v. 137. ) Inc I udes index. ISBN 978-90-481-4115-9 ISBN 978-94-015-8040-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8040-3 1. Science--Methodology--History--16th century. 2. Logic, Modern--16th century. 3. Knowledge, Theory of. 4. EVidence­ -History--16th century. 5. Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642. 6. Aristotle. Posterior analytics. I. Title. II. Series. 0174.B67 vol. 137 [0174.81 001' .01s--dc20 [501 J 91-45044 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved @ 1992 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE Xl ABBREVIATIONS XXI LIST OF SCHEMATIC ANALYSES OF GALILEO'S ARGUMENTS xxiii CHAPTER 1. GALILEO'S LOGICAL METHODOLOGY 1. Method, Logic, and Science 2. Assessments of Galileo's Methodology 4 a. HD Method 4 b. Koyre 5 c. Wisan 7 d. Butts 8 e. Machamer 9 f. McMullin 10 3. Method in the Greek and Latin Traditions 12 a. Greek Teaching l3 b. Latin Teaching 15 4. The Setting for Galileo's Methodological Terminology 17 a. Variety of Sources 18 b. Previous Assessments 19 5. Logica Docens and Logica Utens 21 a. The Necessity of Logic 22 b. Logic and the Sciences 23 c. Galileo: Logician or Scientist? 25 Notes 26 v Vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LOGICA DOCENS CHAPTER 2: THE UNDERSTANDING OF LOGIC IMPLICIT IN MS 27 1. How Individuals Come to Know Things 37 a. The Soul and Its Powers 37 b. A Life-Powers Model 40 c. Impediments to Knowledge 42 2. The Operations of the Intellect 44 a. The Need for Logic 46 b. Active and Passive Truth 47 3. The Term Intention and Its Various Kinds 49 a. First and Second Intentions 50 b. Epistemological Implications 53 4. The Nature of Logic 56 a. Logic's Four Causes 57 b. The Object of Logic 58 c. The Content of Logic 60 5. Instruments of Scientific Knowing 62 a. Galileo's Division 63 b. Defining the Instruments 64 6. Method and Order 66 a. Method 66 b. Order in the Analytics 68 7. Resolutive Method in Aristotelian Logic 69 a. Resolution in the Analytics 69 b. Mathematical Resolution 73 8. Inventive vs. ludicative Science 77 a. Modes of Knowing 77 b. Topical Reasoning 79 Notes 80 CHAPTER 3: SCIENCE AND OPINION AS UNDERSTOOD INMS 27 1. The Possibility, Origin, and Causes of Science 85 a. Possibility 86 b. Origin and Causes 88 2. The Nature and Attributes of Science 91 T ABLE OF CONTENTS vii a. Unity of a Science 93 b. Other Attributes 95 3. Classification of the Sciences 97 a. Specification 98 b. Speculative Sciences 100 c. Subalternation 102 4. Mathematical Sciences 105 a. Pure Mathematics 105 b. The Middle Science of Astronomy 107 c. Causes in Mathematics 111 5. Opinion as Related to Science 114 a. Opinion and Its Kinds 114 b. Relation to Science 117 6. The Probable Syllogism and the Topics 120 7. Topics Related to Scientific Argument 123 a. Causes and Effects 123 b. Antecedents and Consequents 125 c. Definition and Similarity 127 8. Rhetoric and Dialectics 128 Notes 130 CHAPTER 4: DEMONSTRATION AND ITS REQUIREMENTS IN MS 27 1. Foreknowledge in General 135 a. Kinds of Foreknowledge 136 b. Kinds of Foreknowns 138 2. Principles and Suppositions in Demonstration 139 a. Principles 139 b. Suppositions and Hypotheses 142 c. Kinds of Supposition 146 d. Foreknowledge 149 3. Subjects and Properties in Demonstration 150 a. Subjects 150 b. Existence and Meaning 152 c. Properties and Conclusions 155 4. The Nature and Kinds of Demonstration 156 a. Nature of Demonstration 157 b. Kinds of Demonstration 159 Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS c. Comparison with Definition 162 5. Causes and Effects 163 6. Induction 165 a. Zabarella's Teaching 166 b. Galileo's Statements 167 7. The Premises of a Demonstration 171 a. True and Primary Premises 172 b. Immediacy and Self-Evidence 174 8. Necessary, Essential, and Universal Predication 177 a. Necessary Propositions 177 b. Essential Predication 179 c. Universal Predication 181 9. The Demonstrative Regress 181 a. Two Species of Demonstration 182 b. Circularity and Regress 184 c. Zabarella's Influence 186 Notes 188 LOGICA UTENS CHAPTER 5: GALILEO'S SEARCH FOR A NEW SCIENCE OF THE HEAVENS 1. A Demonstrative Paradigm 194 2. Discoveries with the Telescope 197 a. Mountains on the Moon 198 b. Satellites of Jupiter 201 c. Phases of Venus 203 3. The Sunspot Arguments 207 4. Tides, Comets, and Earth's Centrality 211 a. Discourse on the Tides 212 b. Discourse on Comets 216 c. Reply to Ingoli 216 5. Uniting the Heavens and the Earth in One Science 218 a. The Unity of the World 220 b. Earth's Daily Rotation 222 c. Earth's Annual Revolution 225 6. The Reality of the Earth's Motion 226 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix a. The Causal Argument 228 b. The Pope's Alternative 232 Notes 234 CHAPTER 6: GALILEO'S NEW SCIENCES OF MECHANICS AND LOCAL MOTION 1. Archimedean Beginnings 239 2. The Early Treatises on Motion 241 a. The Dialogue on Motion 241 b. The Older De motu: Falling Motion 245 c. The Inclined Plane: Suppositions 251 d. Agent Forces 255 3. The Early Treatises on Mechanics 257 a. The First Mechanics 258 b. Le meccaniche 259 4. Experimentation at Padua 263 a. Pendulums and Inclines 264 b. Projection Experiments 266 5. Acceleration in Falling Motion 268 a. Manuscript Evidence 268 b. Manifesting a Definition 270 6. Hydrostatics: The Discourse on Bodies on or in Water 273 a. Demonstrative Method 274 b. The Cause of Flotation 276 7. Mechanics Revisited: The Strength of Materials 278 a. The Cause of Cohesion 279 b. The New Science of Mechanics 282 8. The New Science of Motion 284 a. Naturally Accelerated Motion 285 b. Projectile Motion 289 c. Suppositions Rejoined 293 Notes 296 EPILOGUE 299 BIBLIOGRAPHY 304 CONCORDANCE OF ENGLISH AND LATIN EDITIONS 313 INDEX OF TERMS 314 INDEX OF NAMES 321 PREFACE This volume is presented as a companion study to my translation of Galileo's MS 27, Galileo's Logical Treatises, which contains Galileo's appropriated questions on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics - a work only recently transcribed from the Latin autograph. Its purpose is to acquaint an English-reading audience with the teaching in those treatises. This is basically a sixteenth-century logic of discovery and of proof about which little is known in the present day, yet one that arguably guided the most significant research program of the seventeenth century. Despite its historical and systematic importance, the teaching is difficult to explain to the modern reader. Part of the problem stems from the fragmentary nature of the manuscript in which it is preserved, part from the contents of the teaching itself, which requires a considerable propadeutic for its comprehension. A word of explanation is thus required to set out the structure of the volume and to detail the editorial decisions that underlie its organization. Two major manuscript studies have advanced the cause of scholarship on Galileo within the past two decades. The first relates to Galileo's experimental activity at Padua prior to his discoveries with the telescope that led to the publication of his Sidereus nuncius in 1610. Much of this activity has been uncovered by Stillman Drake in analyses of manuscript fragments associated with the composition of Galileo's Two New Sciences, fragments now bound in a codex identified as MS 72 in the collection of Galileiana at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. On the basis of these fragments Drake and subsequent investigators have argued convincingly that Galileo was not the Neoplatonist or Neo­ pythagorean he has sometimes been seen, but was strongly empiricist in his thought, having already embarked on a systematic program of experimental research in the first decade of the seventeenth century that would eventually lead him to his "new science" of local motion, not published until 1638. The second study relates to three earlier manuscripts, now generally agreed to have been written by Galileo while teaching, or preparing to teach, at the University of Pis a toward the end of the sixteenth century, in Xl xii PREFACE the years roughly between 1589 and 1591. The first of these, MS 27, contains the logical questions translated in Galileo 's Logical Treatises; the second, MS 46, contains what have been referred to as "Physical Questions" based on Aristotle's De caelo and De generatione; and the third, MS 71, contains Galileo's earliest attempts to construct a science of local motion, usually labeled his De motu antiquiora to distinguish it from the mature science of motion published by him in 1638.
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