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Reading Galileo’s Discorsi in the Early Modern University*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Abstract
This article examines the scholarly practices with which readers at three universities read select passages from Galileo’s 1638 Discorsi, a work depicted by Galileo as one that eschewed the goals and methods of Aristotelian natural philosophy in favor of the quantitative and experimental ones characteristic of modern science. The article reveals that a group of readers — diverse in terms of institutional affiliation, disciplinary identity, geography, and attitude toward Galileo — approached Galileo’s text using the tools of what Ann Blair has termed “bookish” natural philosophy. It argues that, contrary to Galileo’s rhetoric, these readers saw old and new methods as interchangeable.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2015
Footnotes
I am grateful to those who provided feedback at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, especially Matteo Valleriani, Jochen Büttner, and Elaine Leong. Anthony Grafton gave advice in the early stages; suggestions from two anonymous referees were instrumental in improving the piece. Margaret Schotte and Stephen Johnston offered technical assistance. Archival research was supported by Villa I Tatti and the Fulbright Institute of International Education. All translations are my own unless noted.
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