This paper discusses a passage from the Second Day of Galileo's Dialogue in which explicit reference is made to the game of tennis and, more specifically, to spinning balls. This often overlooked passage forms part and parcel of the tightly-knit argumentative structure of the work, and provides key arguments against Aristotelian physics. Furthermore, Galileo's choice of terms shows how careful he was in his use of analogies as effective tools to reconcile the new physics that he was struggling to introduce, with common sense. Finally, and most interestingly, by comparing this passage with a similar one from Galileo's unpublished writings, this paper shows the extent to which Galileo was interested in the physics of spinning balls and how he planned to include a discussion of it in a work that he began shortly after the publication of the Sidereus Nuncius, but never managed to finish.
...MoreArticle Angelini, Annarita (2013) Praecisio and Conjecture: Cusanus' Ball Game and the “Learned Ignorance” of the World. Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (p. 5).
Article
Dijksterhuis, Fokko Jan;
(2013)
Jeu de Paume and Jeux de la Raison in Seventeenth-Century Optics
(/isis/citation/CBB001252891/)
Article
Beretta, Marco;
(2013)
Training Tennis Players through Natural Philosophy: From Scaino's Trattato to Garsault's Art du paumier
(/isis/citation/CBB001252887/)
Article
Luigi Guerrini;
(2014)
Pereira and Galileo: Acceleration in Free Fall and Impetus Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB609816908/)
Article
Antonia LoLordo;
(2015)
Copernicus, Epicurus, Galileo, and Gassendi
(/isis/citation/CBB475586736/)
Chapter
Roux, Sophie;
(2006)
Découvrir le principe d'inertie
(/isis/citation/CBB001024285/)
Chapter
Schemmel, Matthias;
(2012)
Thomas Harriot as an English Galileo: The Force of Shared Knowledge in Early Modern Mechanics
(/isis/citation/CBB001252678/)
Chapter
Patricia Radelet-de-Grave;
(2015)
La chute des corps, le mouvement des corps célestes et l'unification des mondes
(/isis/citation/CBB951522195/)
Chapter
Pietro Daniel Omodeo;
(2015)
Riflessioni sul moto terrestre nel Rinascimento: tra filosofia naturale, meccanica e cosmologia
(/isis/citation/CBB678565435/)
Article
Tosi, Alessandro;
(2013)
Tennis in Early Modern Visual Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001252890/)
Article
Angelini, Annarita;
(2013)
Praecisio and Conjecture: Cusanus' Ball Game and the “Learned Ignorance” of the World
(/isis/citation/CBB001252886/)
Article
Sylla, Edith Dudley;
(2013)
Jacob Bernoulli and the Mathematics of Tennis
(/isis/citation/CBB001252892/)
Chapter
Palmerino, Carla Rita;
(2007)
Bodies in Water like Planets in the Skies: Uses and Abuses of Analogical Reasoning in the Study of Planetary Motion
(/isis/citation/CBB001032045/)
Article
Galen Barry;
(2021)
Spinoza on the Resistance of Bodies
(/isis/citation/CBB170992423/)
Article
Andrew Janiak;
(2015)
Space and Motion in Nature and Scripture: Galileo, Descartes, Newton
(/isis/citation/CBB462811041/)
Article
Palmerino, Carla Rita;
(2010)
The Geometrization of Motion: Galileo's Triangle of Speed and Its Various Transformations
(/isis/citation/CBB001031512/)
Chapter
Shea, William R.;
Bascelli, Tiziana;
(2008)
How Torricelli Improved on Galileo's Laws of Free Fall and Projectile Motion
(/isis/citation/CBB000953671/)
Article
Palmieri, Paolo;
(2005)
Galileo's Construction of Idealized Fall in the Void
(/isis/citation/CBB000773904/)
Book
Wallace, William A.;
(2004)
Domingo de Soto and the Early Galileo: Essays on Intellectual History
(/isis/citation/CBB000470152/)
Chapter
Ken'ichi Takahashi;
(2015)
On the Need to Rewrite the Formation Process of Galileo's Theory of Motion
(/isis/citation/CBB656990481/)
Article
Schemmel, Matthias;
(2006)
The English Galileo: Thomas Harriot and the Force of Shared Knowledge in Early Modern Mechanics
(/isis/citation/CBB000740753/)
Be the first to comment!