|
|
Re: [HM] Galileo
Posted:
Mar 26, 2004 4:56 PM
|
|
Dear List,
The bibliography on Galileo's experiments is really extensive.
For what it's worth, Alexander Hahn's most recent in/ex-cursion in the
history of mathematics have resulted in
"The Pendulum Swings Again: A Mathematical Reassessment of Galileo's
Experiments With Inclined Planes, to appear in the _Archive for History
of Exact Sciences_. See:
According to Hahn, in the early 1950's Alexander Koyre asserted,
contrary to commonly held thought at the time, that Galileo's actual
experiments were sadly inadequate and that he relied primarily on
armchair or thought experiments. This view was challenged in the
early sixties when Thomas Settle demonstrated that Galileo could
indeed have carried out with satisfactory precision the experiments
with inclined planes that he describes in the Discorsi. Confirmation
of Settle's argument came in 1973 when Stillman Drake perused
Galileo's unpublished working papers in the Florence Biblioteca -
this collection is known as Manuscript 72 or Codex 72 - and found
written records of Galileo's experiments.
I'm not quite familiar with this issue, so the sooner I shut up
the better.
Cheers, Julio
|
|
