Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

by Galileo Galilei, Henry Crew (Translator), Alfonso De Salvio (Translator)

Overview

This is the standard translation of one of the greatest single works by one of Western science's greatest single men, the Renaissance physicist Galileo Galilei. Written near the end of his life, the book had to be published abroad and led to Galileo's condemnation. But he nevertheless considered it to be "superior to everything else of mine published."

Despite the fact that the book encompasses 30 years of highly original experimentation and theorizing on the part of this singular man, it is eminently readable. Written as a discussion between a master and two students, it sets forth its hundreds of experiments and summarizes the conclusions Galileo drew from those experiments in a brisk, direct style. Using helpful geometric demonstrations, Galileo discusses aspects of fracture of solid bodies, cohesion, leverage, the speed of light, sound, pendulums, falling bodies, projectiles, uniform motion, accelerated motion, and the strength of wires, rods and beams under different loadings and placements.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616401894
Publisher:	Cosimo Classics
Publication date:	05/01/2010
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

GALILEO GALILEI was born in Pisa on February 15, 1564, into a family of impoverished nobility. In 1581 he enrolled at the University of Pisa to study medicine, but later abandoned this for mathematics. Galileo was appointed chair of mathematics at Pisa, and remained in that post until 1591; later he moved to Padua, and finally to Florence.

In marked contrast with the established tradition of science, Galileo relied on experimentation rather than ab-stract theorizing about the operation of the physical uni-verse. The famous experiment conducted from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa demolished the Aristotelian dictum that objects fall with a velocity equal to their weight. Galileo's avowal of the Copernican theory of the solar system, which set the sun and not the earth at the center, put him at loggerheads with ecclesiastical authority. Galileo was denounced publicly by the clergy and his peers; following the publication of his Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems in 1632, Galileo was brought before the Inquisition for heresy and ordered to recant. The Inquisition subsequently decreed that all copies of the Dialogue be burned and that Galileo be imprisoned for the remainder of his life. The sentence was later commuted to house arrest at Arcetri, outside Florence.

Despite its suppression in Italy, the Dialogue Con-cerning Two Chief World Systems was translated and disseminated throughout Europe. Galileo likewise became known for his discoveries of new heavenly bodies and refinements of the telescope. His last work, Dialogues Con-cerning Two New Sciences (1638), completed while under house arrest and smuggled out of Italy, deals with the motion and resistance of bodies. Galileo regarded the Two New Sciences as the best of all his studies. Indeed this work, the result of more than thirty years' experimentation and labor, may stand as the greatest monument to a life devoted to scientific truth and defiant of all strictures on freedom of expression. Galileo died at his villa in Arcetri on January 8, 1642; coincidentally, the year of his death is the year Sir Isaac Newton was born.

Galileo Galilei's other published works include Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger) (1610), on the revolution of heavenly bodies; and Letters on Sunspots (1613).

Table of Contents

I "First new science, treating of the resistance which solid bodies offer to fracture. First Day"
II Concerning the cause of cohesion. Second Day
III "Second new science, treating of motion [movimenti locali]. "
Third Day
Uniform motion
Naturally accelerated motion
IV Violent motions.Projectiles. Fourth Day
V Appendix; theorems and demonstrations concerning the centers of gravity of solids