Two little things I've run into just lately, and on the chance someone
else might not know them and might find them amusing:
I. It's well enough known that Galileo was not the first ever to figure
out the wrongness of Aristotle's idea that things fall at a speed
pro****tional to the weight; in fact, I have the impression that someone
beat him to the same thought experiment in Two New Sciences about tying
two weights together and then cutting the string. But I didn't hear till
recently about John Philoponus. Must have been a smart guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philoponus
The amusing bit is that his great contem****ary philosophical adversary was
none other than--
Simplicius!
Same guy that Ludovico della Colombe admired so much that Galileo named
the Colombe-caricature figure after him in the Dialogue.
Which raises a pair of queries. Is there a good accessible source from
which to read what Philoponus actually said? The Stanford reference is
good and respectable, but some actual text would be a lot nicer. Also, is
there any basis for the assertion that he influenced Galileo? The ideas of
Galileo's innovations having been based on earlier philosophers are
controversial (actually, they're false :) and not to be assumed without
evidence.
(Incidentally, if it comes to refuting Aristotle's idea" that the speed is
pro****tional to the weight of the moving bodies and indirectly
pro****tional to the density of the medium" (
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philoponus/#2.2um
), Archimedes got
there long before. We moderns tend not to associate the kinetics of fall
with the theory of buoyancy, but that's because we accepted Archimedes so
long ago. To Aristotle -- correct me if I'm wrong here -- they were
linked, and so the priority in defeating his theory must be awarded to
Archimedes.)
II. Galileo recognized only *Two* Chief World Systems, ignoring Tycho's.
One contending scholl of thought is that this was due to ego and
professional jealousy and inability to rebut. Another holds that Galileo,
who treated Tycho's observational work with great respect, didn't like
ithe system on the grounds that it was physically ridiculous -- citing
Galileo to this effect.
Suppose you accept the latter interpretation: Galileo saw the Tychonic
system as a gimmick, not representing reality at all. That is, a mere
hypothesis! (In the sense of the word at that time.) Just what he was
ordered to believe of the Copernican system.
I dunno, it sounds like ironic humor to me, if to no one else.
Alas, it also condemns Galileo. His scorn for this mere hypothesis shows
clearly that he did NOT really think the Copernican view was the same sort
of thing; surely he thought it represented reality. I am shocked --
shocked! -- to find this proof that the position he stated to the
Inquisition was hypocritical.
--
Dan Drake
dd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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