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Galileo: Sciences
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Galileo's new interest brought to an end his medical studies, but in Pisa at that time there was only one notable science teacher, Francisco Buonamico, and he was an Aristotelian. Galileo seems... to have been an eager disciple of his, as shown by Galileo's Juvenilia, dating from 1584, mostly paraphrases of Aristotelian physics and cosmology. Because of financial difficulties Galileo had to leave the University of Pisa in 1585 before he got his degree.
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The trial did not address the scientific merits of the case, it was about whether or not Galileo had disobeyed an official order. It was suggested that he admit to some wrongdoing, and he would get off lightly. He agreed to tone down the Dialogue, pleading that he had been carried away by his own arguments. He was condemned to indefinite imprisonment, and, after some negotiation, was confined to his villa until his death in 1642. During this period, he wrote Two New Sciences, a book on the strength of materials and on the science of motion.
The sketch above provides the basis for understanding Galileo's development. He has a new science of matter, a new physical cosmography, and a new science of local motion. In all these he is using a mathematical mode of description based upon, though somewhat changed from, the proportional geometry of Euclid, Book VI and Archimedes (for details on the change see Palmieri 2002).
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The first draft of the work went back to Galileo's professorship at Padua. But cosmology replaced pure physics as the center of his attention until 1633. His condemnation was in a sense a gain for physics. He had no sooner regained his composure in Siena than he was at work preparing for publication old, long-neglected manuscripts. The Two New Sciences, like the Dialogue, is in the dialogue form and the discussions are divided into Four Days. The First Day is largely taken up with the mechanical resistance of materials, with ample allowance for speculations on the atomic constitution of matter.
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Historians disagree about Galileo's role as the "founder of modern experimental science." In fact, some of them doubt that experiment, in the modern sense, played an important part at all in Galileo's scientific development. These historians maintain that Galileo's real originality lay in the way he approached scientific problems. First, Galileo reduced those problems to very simple terms on the basis of everyday experience and common-sense logic. Then he analyzed and resolved the problems according to simple mathematical descriptions. The success with which Galileo applied this technique to the analysis of physics, especially the physics of motion, opened the way for the development of modern mathematical physics.
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In October, 1992 Cardinal Paul Poupard presented to Pope John Paul II the results of the papal-requested Pontifical Academy study of the famous 1633 trial of Galileo.1 He reported the study’s conclusion that at the time of the trial, "theologians…. failed to grasp the profound non-literal meaning of the Scriptures when they describe the physical structure of the universe. This led them unduly to transpose a question of factual observation into the realm of faith…(and) to a disciplinary measure from which Galileo ‘had much to suffer.’"2 The headlines that followed screamed that the Church had reversed itself on the seventeenth century astronomer and commentators wondered about the impact of the study on papal infallibility. The New York Times snickered that the Church had finally admitted that Galileo was right and the earth did revolve around the sun. Others proclaimed that the Church had surrendered in the alleged war between faith and science.
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