Galilée

Summary

Dominique Pagani sees Galileo as the founder of scientific physics: with him, physics becomes a science and gains its independence. In his view, the Galilean revolution lies not primarily in heliocentrism but in the discovery of inertia and of the relativity of motion, in which rest and uniform rectilinear motion cannot be told apart12. He stresses that Galileo is satisfied neither with the telescope nor with the experimental fact: he demands the mathematical law that accounts for the observation, as stated in The Assayer, for which the book of nature is written in mathematical language34. He links this "Galilean break" to Galileo-Cartesian mechanism, which ruins ancient finalism and disenchants nature. He adds, however, that this is not a matter of saying that Galileo is intelligent and Aristotle an idiot5. He often comes back to Galileo's condemnation, which comes before the Discourse on Method and explains Descartes's caution6. He also quotes "Eppur si muove" and recalls that Nazi scientists wanted to call his physics into question.

1. 1#9.17 The geopolitical metaphor: Planck, Descartes, Clouscard17 Mar 2021 · 27:33
2. 2Is history a subject?9 Mar 2017 · 51:07
3. 3From Copernicus to Lenin: revolution!28 Aug 2026 · 30:54
4. 4Panzer-philosophy against the cogito: neo-fascism or the ideology of nature (Heidegger, Descartes)5 Mar 2022 · 41:29
5. 5#5.2 bis Questions (Facebook Live)6 Dec 2018 · 17:45
6. 6#2.4 Between crisis and war: philosophising?10 Mar 2016 · 46:14

Summary produced automatically from 106 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.