Customer Reviews

Galileo: A Philosophical Study

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Galileo Analyzed in Depth

In this book Shapere's investigation focuses on two questions: the role of the principle of inertia in Galileo's thought, and the "method" by which Galileo arrived at his conclusions.

To this end Shapere examines several historically important interpretations of the writings of Galileo, which portray Galileo as a revolutionary. These are notably the empiricist-experimentalist view of Ernst Mach, which portrays Galileo as a reaction against the dogmatic Aristotelianism, and the rationalist-mathematical view of Alexandre Koyre, which portrays Galileo as a revival of Platonism. Shapere also examines the writings of Pierre Duhem, who found most of Galileo's ideas anticipated in some of the latter's fourteenth-century predecessors, and thus did not portray Galileo as a revolutionary.

Shapere finds both merit and deficiency in all these interpretations, and follows through with an analysis of a more general understanding of scientific development, of innovation and criticism.

This book was published in the same year as Feyerabend's Against Method, and thus Shapere was apparently unaware of Feyerabend's thesis of "counterinduction" discussed in Feyerabend's examination of Galileo's writings. Counterinduction is the reinterpretation of observational evidence in the light of the concepts expressed in a theory, such as the geocentric or the heliocentric cosmologies. Long after Galileo, Heisenberg practiced counterinduction in his Copenhagen interpretation of the electron track in the Wilson cloud chamber, and was thus led to develop his uncertainty relations for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Feyerabend's counterinduction thesis complicates any discussion of scientific criticism.

It is ironic that so many loquacious books have been written about the "Galileo affair" involving the Vatican with so little understanding of the writings of Galileo. For example Shapere finds an egregious misinterpretation of Galileo by McMullin.

Shapere's brief book of only 160 pages is a gem of philosophical investigation and coherent understanding, and a remedy that is badly needed.

Thomas J. Hickey