Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

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

Overview

Galileo's groundbreaking dialogues are a summation of three decades of scientific work he had undertaken in the fledgling field of physics. This edition includes the diagrams crucial for understanding the text.

Writing these dialogues in 1638, the elderly Galileo had a life of achievements behind him. Despite attempts at suppression of his writings by the Roman Inquisition, his ideas were successfully communicated across Europe. The motion of objects and resistance to such motion, the concept of velocity, and the laws of gravity are merely a few of the topics covered in these detailed dialogues.

At the outset, we are introduced to the three conversation partners: Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio. These three Venetians embark on a scientific discussion, hoping to explain the curiosities of things such as speed and movement. Over the course of four days, their meetings grow in complexity and scope as they strive to explain physical phenomena.

Later, we encounter many propositions and theorems concerning a wide variety of subjects; these represent the sum of Galileo's progress in understanding gravity, motion, resistance, acceleration, velocity, and the behavior of material structures. The 'Two New Sciences' referred to by the title are the nature of materials, and the motion of objects.

A total of 130 illustrations and charts populate this text; for the most part, they are situated adjacent to their respective proposition or theorem. In many of the more complex explanations, they are important in aiding the reader to grasp what Galileo means. Through absorbing these wide-ranging investigations, we may appreciate the justness of Galileo's moniker: "The father of modern physics."

This edition's translation to English is by Alfonso de Salvio and Henry Crew. The former was an expert on the technical aspects of the Italian language, while the latter was a longstanding scholar of physics with much experience teaching in the field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789874167
Publisher:	Pantianos Classics
Publication date:	01/01/1914
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(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