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Galileo and the Art of Reasoning Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science GALILEO AND THE ART OF REASONING BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE EDITED BY ROBERT S. COHEN AND MARX W. WARTOFSKY VOLUME 61 MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO Dept. of Philosophy, University ofNevada, Las Vegas, U.S.A. GALILEO AND THE ART OF REASONING Rhetorical Foundations of Logic and Scientific Method D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY DORDRECHT: HOLLAND I BOSTON: U.S.A. LONDON: ENGLAND Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Finocchiaro, Maurice A. 1942- Galileo and the art of reasoning. (Boston studies in the philosophy of science; v. 61) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642-Logic. 2. Logic, Modern­ History. 3. Reasoning. 4. Science-Methodology-History. 5. Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642. Dialogo ... dove ... si discorre sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo. 6. Solar system-Early works to 1800. 7. Astronomy-Early works to 1800. I. Title. II. Series. B785.G24F56 160 80-15232 ISBN-I3: 978-90-277-1095-6 e-ISBN-I3: 978-94-009-9017-3 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-9017-3 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Boston Inc., Lincoln Building, 160 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland. D. Reidel Publishing Company is a member of the Kluwer Group. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1980 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1980 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 informational storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL PREFACE vii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION / Galileo's Dialogue and Western Culture xv PART I: GALILEO'S DIALOGUE l. Faith Versus Reason: The Rhetorical Form and Content of Galileo's Dialogue 3 2. Fact and Reasoning: The Logical Structure of Galileo's Argument 27 3. Emotion, Aesthetics, and Persuasion: The Rhetorical Force of Galileo's Argument 46 4. Truth and Method: The Scientific Content of Galileo'sDialogue 67 5. Theory and Practice: The Methodological Content of Galileo's Science 103 PART II: LOGICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL CRITIQUES 6. Concreteness and Judgment: The Dialectical Nature of Galileo's Methodology 145 7. The Primacy of Reasoning: The Logical Character of Galileo's Methodology 167 8. The Rationality of Science and the Science of Rationality: Critique of Subjectivism 180 9. The History of Science and the Science of History: Critique of Apriorism 202 10. The Erudition of Logic and the Logic of Erudition: Critique of Galileo Scholarship 224 11. The Psychology of Logic and the Logic of Psychology: Critique of the Psychology of Reasoning 256 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 12. The Rhetoric of Logic and the Logic of Rhetoric: Critique of the New Rhetoric 273 13. The Logic of Science and the Science of Logic: Toward a Science of Reasoning 293 PART III: THEORY OF REASONING 14. Propositional Structure: The Understanding of Reasoning 311 15. Active Involvement: The Evaluation of Reasoning 332 16. Galileo as a Logician: A Model and a Data Basis 343 17. Criticism, Complexity, and Invalidities: Theoretical Considera- tions 413 CONCLUDING REMARKS / Toward a Galilean Theory of Ration- ality 432 APPENDIX / Page Concordance of Dialogue Editions 440 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 454 INDEX 464 EDITORIAL PREFACE The work of Galileo has long been important not only as a foundation of modern physics but also as a model - and perhaps the paradigmatic model - of scientific method, and therefore as a leading example of scientific rationality. However, as we know, the matter is not so simple. The range of Galileo readings is so varied that one may be led to the conclusion that it is a case of chacun a son Galileo; that here, as with the Bible, or Plato or Kant or Freud or Finnegan's Wake, the texts themselves underdetermine just what moral is to be pointed. But if there is no canonical reading, how can the texts be taken as evidence or example of a canonical view of scientific rationality, as in Galileo? Or is it the case, instead, that we decide a priori what the norms of rationality are and then pick through texts to fmd those which satisfy these norms? Specifically, how and on what grounds are we to accept or reject scientific theories, or scientific reasoning? If we are to do this on the basis of historical analysis of how, in fact, theories came to be accepted or rejected, how shall we distinguish 'is' from 'ought'? What follows (if anything does) from such analysis or reconstruction about how theories ought to be accepted or rejected? Maurice Finocchiaro's study of Galileo brings an important and original approach to the question of scientific rationality by way of a systematic read­ ing and reconstruction of Galileo's project and of the modes of his reasoning. In effect, Finocchiaro suggests that the standard picture of the scientific revo­ lution may be fundamentally mistaken. Where, on older views, the scientific revolution was seen as a radical innovation in method as well as in content, and even as marginal to the dominant cultural themes of the Renaissance - largely literary, political, aesthetic, rhetorical - Finocchiaro proposes that the scientific revolution, in one of its major figures, was characterized fundamen­ tally by the same emphases on dialectic and rhetoric which marked the dominant themes of Renaissance humanism. Thus, the scientific revolution was as much a matter of persuasion as of discovery, its success as science crucially a matter of the triumphs of practical reasoning and persuasion in other modes beyond the usually acknowledged one of mathematical rational­ ity in terms of proofs and demonstrations. If this is correct, not mathematical rationality alone but scientific judgment, the instruments of persuasion and vii viii EDITORIAL PREFACE of practical argument, the alogical components of discourse, played a major role in the novel mode of scientific reasoning. Finocchiaro argues that "rhetoric is sometimes crucial in science; and hence rhetoric has an important role to play in scientific rationality and the rhetorical aspects of science should not be neglected". His argument is based on a detailed and careful examination of the text of the Dialogues .... What Finocchiaro argues will, we are sure, become a basic proposal for enlargement and revision in the canonical program of logical reconstruction which has so strongly marked and nearly dominated modern philosophy of science. He offers an alternative rational reconstruction of ·Galileo's scientific thought. Logic is also included, of course, but in a wider sense: "I am advocating", he writes, "a practice oriented logic or theory of reasoning, and thus it is logical principles that are to be tested by and derived from appropriately selected actual reasoning and not the other way around" (291, fn. 8). And so "a general logic seems possible, if we concentrate on the critical understanding of actual reasoning, which concentration carries along with it an empirical, historical, concrete or contextual, practical and critical appreciation" (305). In this book, Finocchiaro not only offers us a sustained analysis of the Dialogues in terms of the structure of the work, Galileo's reasoning, his uses of rhetoric. Beyond this, which is the heart of his work, he develops a critical and appreciative discussion in depth of the principal Galileo studies: those of Koyre, Feyerabend, Drake, Clave lin , Kuhn, Shapere. Further, Finocchiaro gives us a series of sustained studies of topics in the 'science of rhetoric' as an initial sketch of a theory or reasoning which enlarges scientific rationality beyond the limits of formal or deductive reason. We may say that Finocchiaro rounds out the traditional approaches to the 'logical syntax' and semantics of scientific discourse with a serious construction of the (long neglected) pragmatics of this discourse as an instrument of argument and persuasion. In a sense, his work is an interesting and promising supplement to the syntactic and semantic reconstruction of the classic Vienna Circle achievement. Nor has Finocchiaro merely appended 'externalist' factors to the 'internalist' logical empiricism; rather, for him the normative is embodied within the actual and practical reasoning of science, internal to what we could call 'scientific culture'. Understanding scientific reasoning must include, then, practical scientific judgment as part of the 'science of rhetoric,' not just the rhetoric of science. Center for the Philosophy and History ofScience ROBERT S. COHEN Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY May 1980 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The investigations in this book are interdisciplinary in the sense that different parts are likely to appeal primarily to individuals in different fields. A layman will fmd in the Introduction reasons why he ought to be interested in Galileo Galilei's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, and in Chapters 1-5 discussions of the aspects of the book most relevant to him. These chapters are also addressed to scientists, who of course will fmd greater mean­ ing therein. Rhetorical scholars will fmd Chapters 1-3,8-9, and 12-17 of some interest; cognitive psychologists may appreciate Chapters 11 and 16, linguists Chapters 13 and 16. Religious historians will fmd here the most exhaustive study ever published of the book that caused "the greatest scandal in Christendom" , Chapters 1-5, 6 and 16 being of greatest relevance to them. These Chapters may also interest cultural historians. Logicians will appreciate Chapters 11-17 the most, while philosophers of science can read Chapters 8-9 first and then Chapters 4-7.
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