1.4.2 Note to text 1.4.1:

• Ibn al-Haytham - Ибн ал-Хайсам.

1.5 Text Galileo Galilei and the rise of physico-mathematics

1.5.1 Read the text and answer: What is Galileo famous for? Reread the third and the fourth abstracts of text 1.2.1 and make a list of Galileo’s contributions to science using the information from both the texts.

In the 17th century, natural philosophers began to mount a sustained attack on the Scholastic philosophical program, and supposed that mathematical descriptive schemes adopted from such fields as mechanics and astronomy could actually yield universally valid characterizations of motion. The Tuscan mathematician Galileo Galilei was the central figure in the shift to this perspective.

Figure 2 - Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

As a mathematician, Galileo’s role in the university culture of his era was subordinated to the three major topics of study: law, medicine, and theology (which was closely allied to philosophy). Galileo, however, felt that the descriptive content of the technical disciplines warranted philosophical interest, particularly because mathematical analysis of astronomical observations—notably the radical analysis offered by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus concerning the relative motions of the sun, earth, moon, and planets—indicated that philosophers’ statements about the nature of the universe could be shown to be in error. Galileo also performed mechanical experiments, and insisted that motion itself—regardless of whether that motion was natural or artificial—had universally consistent characteristics that could be described mathematically.

Galileo used his 1609 telescopic discovery of the moons of Jupiter, as published in his Sidereus Nuncius in 1610, to procure a position in the Medici court with the dual title of mathematician and philosopher. As a court philosopher, he was expected to engage in debates with philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition, and received a large audience for his own publications, such as The Assayer and Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences, which was published abroad after he was placed under house arrest for his publication of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632.

Galileo’s interest in the mechanical experimentation and mathematical description in motion established a new natural philosophical tradition focused on experimentation. This tradition, combining with the non-mathematical emphasis on the collection of "experimental histories" by philosophical reformists such as William Gilbert and Francis Bacon, drew a significant following in the years leading up to and following Galileo’s death, including Evangelista Torricelli and the participants in the Accademia del Cimento in Italy; Marin Mersenne and Blaise Pascal in France; Christiaan Huygens in the Netherlands; and Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle in England.

1.5.2 Retell the text using the list of Galileo’s contributions.