New Perspectives on Galileo: Papers Deriving from and Related to a Workshop on Galileo held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1975 PDF
Preview New Perspectives on Galileo: Papers Deriving from and Related to a Workshop on Galileo held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1975
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON GALILEO THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE A SERIES OF BOOKS ON PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, METHODOLOGY, AND EPISTEMOLOGY PUBLISHED IN CONNECTION WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE PROGRAMME Managing Editor J. 1. LEACH Editorial Board J. BUB, R. E. BUTTS, W. HARPER, J. HINTIKKA, D. J. HOCKNEY, C. A. HOOKER, 1. NICHOLAS, G. PEARCE VOLUME 14 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON GALILEO Papers Deriving from and Related to a Workshop on Gali/eo held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1975 Edited by ROBERT E. BUTTS Department of Philosophy, the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada and JOSEPH C. PITT Department of Philosophy and Religion, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY DORDRECHT : HOLLAND / BOSTON: U.S.A. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: New perspectives on Galileo. (The University of Western Ontario series in philosophy of science ; v. 14) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. S cience-Methodology -Congresses. 2. Science-Philosophy-Congresses. 3. Galilei, Galileo,1564-1642. I. Butts, Robert E. II. Pitt, JosephC. Q174.N48 509/.2'4 77-17851 ISBN-I3: 978-90-277-0891-5 e-ISBN: 978-94-009-9799-8 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-9799-8 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico by D. Reidel Publishing Company,lnc. Lincoln Building, 160 Old Derby Street, Hingham, Mass. 02043, U.S.A. All Rights Reserved Copyright © 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover I st Edition 1978 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 PREFACE vii ROBERT E. BUTTS and JOSEPH C. PITT/Introduction ix WINIFRED LOVELL WISAN/Galileo's Scientific Method: a Reexamina ti on ROBER T E.BUTTS/Some Tactics in Galileo'~ Propaganda for the Mathematization of Scientific Experience 59 WILLIAM A. WALLACE/Galileo Galilei and the Doctores Parisienses 87 WILLIAM R. SHEA!Descartes as Critic of Galileo 139 PETER MACHAMER/Galileo and the Causes 161 JOSEPH C. PITT/Galileo: Causation and the Use of Geometry 181 H. E. LE GRAND/Galileo's Matter Theory 197 ERNAN McMuLLIN/The Conception of Science in Galileo's Work 209 INDEX 259 PREFACE The essays in this volume (except for the contribution of Dr. Le Grand) are extremely revised versions of papers originally delivered at a workshop on Galileo held in Blacksburg, Virginia in October, 1975. The meeting was organized by Professor Joseph Pitt and sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Religion, The College of Arts and Sciences, and the Division of Research of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The papers that follow deal with problems OIf Galileo's philosophy of science, specific and general problems connected with his methodology, and with historical and conceptual questions concerning the relationship of his work to that of contemporaries and both earlier and later scientists. New perspectives take many forms. In this book the 'newness' has, for the most part, two forms. First, in the papers by Wisan, Shea, Le Grand and Wallace (the concerns will also appear in some of the other contributions), greatly enriched historical discoveries of how Galileo's science and its method ology developed are provided. It should be stressed that these papers are attempts to recapture a deep sense of the kind of science Galileo was creating. Other papers in the volume, for example, those by McMullin, Machamer, Butts and Pitt, underscore the importance of this historical venture by discussing various aspects of the philosophical background of Galileo's thought. The historical and philosophical evaluations and analyses compliment one another. We think it important that they should - Galileo's thOUght was much too complex, much too original and much too dependent upon earlier modes of enquiry to make the task of reconstructing his philosophy of science easy. No catalogue of historical details will do that task; nor will a systematic presenta tion by philosophers of the 'logic' of his methodology. The authors of the following essays remain faithful to the ambiguity that was characteristic of Galileo's work as a productive scientist. In this way they manage to instruct us best in the many dimensions of one of the seminal persons involved in creating modern science. All too frequently philosophers and historians are inclined to go their separate ways. It is our hope that the present volume will vii viii PREFACE be seen as a good example of what can be done in the difficult job of building a crossroad. This volume would not have been possible without the extraordinary cooperation of the authors of the papers, many of whom commented on and criticized portions of the papers of others involved in the workshop. The workshop itself was only possible because of the considerable support offered by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University through the good offices of Associate Dean of Research for Arts and Sciences Thomas Gilmer, Dean of the Research Division Randal M. Robertson, and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences William C. Havard. We thank them for that support. May, 1977 THE EDITORS INTRODUCTION The now classical works of Koyre and Crombie, works different in philosoph ical and historiographical approaches, provoked new scholarly interest in Galileo's science. The motivations of their work were, however, very similar. Both wanted a more detailed lq10wledge of Galileo's actual achievements in positive science, both sought to understand the contribution to scientific methodology generated by this major figure participating in 'the scientific revolution,' and both, by means of novel insights and conceptual combina tions of historical and philosophical materials in ways undreamed of by earlier scholars, introduced a whole new dimension to thought about science that can be called the 'metaphysics of science.' Students of the scientific revolution and the work of Galileo fully realize the importance of the contributions made by these two men. The point is that no one could have forecast the impact that their work - and that of others - would have on our attempt to understand the beginnings of modern ~cience. At the present writing, there is probably no issue that receives greater attention in thought about science than the attempt to understand scientific change, scientific progress, and like concepts. That attention, moreover, is beginning completely to overshadow interests that were once dominant, for example, problems of confirmation in science, the status of hypothetico-deductive explanation, or the 'meaning' of hypothetical constructs having to do with the empirically unobservable. We can of course mention others whose keen historical or philosophical sense has led us to think new thoughts and envision new possibilities: Kuhn and Burtt are only two. But this 'Introduction' is not the place to rehearse, even in a summary, the major eontributions that have been and are now changing the character of history of science and philosophy of science. How ever, it does suit the purposes of this volume to indicate that the present scholarly forms of interest in the science of Galileo exist in an enriched con text of a fairly widespread exploration of just those dimensions of Calileo's career exposed in an exciting way by Koyre and Crombie. In this connection it does seem appropriate to name some names (with apologies to those ix x INTRODUCTION neglected for reasons of space or because of simple oversight). There are three groups of contributors to mention. No one will deny that many of the most important studies of Galileo's positive scientific discoveries have been made by Stillman Drake. Equally important work has been done by William Shea, E. J. Aiton, A. Rupert Hall, Thomas B. Settle, and others. For many of these scholars the question of why Galileo accepted the conclusions he did transforms a reporting of what he actually says he did into an attempt to comprehend the methodology he is reputedly so famous for having developed. One important aspect of this methodological concern has to do with experiments and what Galileo thought they accomplished. It is one thing to ask whether or not he dropped the steel ball from the Tower of Pisa; it is quite another to ask why he would have thought it important to do so just in case he ever did. Drake has made meticu lous studies of the materials which appear to show that Galileo actually did perform experiments, others, for example, Settle, have tried to reproduce what they think must have been Galileo's experiments. Galileo's 'experimental method' is obviously an important feature of his science. Important as this method is, however, discussions of what experi ments he attempted and how he apparently construed the reputed results, do not rule out what are probably deeper considerations of method - considera tions we are quite prepared to call 'philosophical.' Just as questions of what actually was discovered blend into questions about what the discoveries mean, so questions about what the discoveries might mean blend into questions about how the discoverer conceived the universe in the very construction of his questions. This very complex blend of methodological and 'metaphysical' questions constitutes the third dimension of contemporary interest in the accomplishments of GalileD'. Indeed, it would be our contention that more important work has been offered in this area than in any other. We have mentioned the classical 20th-century thinkers who have contributed memoirs on the frontier of methodology-metaphysics. Others of major importance are Winifrid Wisan, William Wallace, William Shea, and a philosopher who keeps coming back to haunt us with his challenge that science, methodology and metaphysics are all bright meadows that will turn into swamps, all hopes that will become utter disappointments - Paul Feyerabend. We have suggested that three areas of Galileo's work have come into prominent focus during this century: (I) the novelty of his positive scientific INTRODUCTION xi discoveries (if any); (2) the natun: of his way of doing science - his method ology; (3) his 'metaphysics'; the conditions, if you will, under which he would have found any science acceptable. The three categories must of course be seen in the larger context of what others were attempting in science during his lifetime, and in the framework of the kind of revolution in thought about nature that we now take as an obvious feature of his concerns. We shall turn away from these more general considerations in order to show respects in which the contributions to the present volume continue the vigorous activity that has been going on in Galileo scholarship during the last few decades. For the most part the papers in this volume deal broadly with the philo sophical background of Galileo's thought and with questions concerning Galileo's methodology. Two papers, those of Shea and Wallace, appear to be more or less standard historical studies, Wallace concerned with dating Galileo's so-called Juvenalia, Shea investigating the question whether Galileo and Descartes independently both discovered the times-squared law. In this case appearance is not reality; the two papers also show implications for understanding Galileo's methodology and metaphysics. It is striking that the array of papers exhibits a coincidence of similar insights and interpretations and an overlap of attention to common themes. We propose to look briefly at three such themes: Galileo's method, his views on causality, and his treat ment of the nature of mathematics. As we shall see, the three themes are themselves interrelated and cannot neatly be compartmentalized. In her perceptive study of the development of Galileo's method over a 50-year period, Wisan outlines the basic points. The model for Galileo's methodology is mathematics, not logic. Unlike most of his contemporaries operating in a quasi-Aristotelian methodological tradition, he thought that knowledge came through the application of mathematics to experience - knowledge is the result of calculation or observation of experimental results, it is not the grasping of essences. (The profound association between this form of essentialism and the subject-predicate logic of Aristotle is attested to by the large variety of metaphysical systems based on this logic leading from Aristotle to Bradley. That the logic is already to be found in Plato is a historical commonplace.) Wisan goes on to spell out in detail how Galileo wanted rational principles to be rendered immediately evident through reason and experience, and how discovering true causes means discovering which known rational principles provide grounds for the events to be explained.
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