Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof: The Background, Content, and Use of His Appropriated Treatises on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics

349 Pages·1992·6.37 MB·English

by  William A. Wallace (auth.)

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 ofN ew 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 1s t 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 LAT IN 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