New Perspectives on Galileo : Papers Deriving From and Related to a Workshop on Galileo Held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1975

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. Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Galileo’s Scientific Method: A Reexamination....Pages 1-57 Some Tactics in Galileo’s Propaganda for the Mathematization of Scientific Experience....Pages 59-85 Galileo Galilei and the Doctores Parisienses ....Pages 87-138 Descartes as Critic of Galileo....Pages 139-159 Galileo and the Causes....Pages 161-180 Galileo: Causation and the Use of Geometry....Pages 181-195 Galileo’s Matter Theory....Pages 197-208 The Conception of Science in Galileo’s Work....Pages 209-257 Back Matter....Pages 259-264 Papers Deriving from and Related to a Workshop on Galileo held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA, October, 1975