Stillman Drake - Böcker

In a startling reinterpretation of the evidence, Stillman Drake advances the hypothesis that Galileo's trial and condemnation by the Inquisition was caused not by his defiance of the Church, but by the hostility of contemporary philosophers.Galileo's own beautifully lucid arguments are used to show how his scientific method was utterly divorced from the Aristotelian approach to physics in that it was based on a search not for causes but for laws. Galileo's method was of overwhelming significance for the development of modern physics, and led to a final parting of the ways between science and philosophy. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

For forty years, beginning with the publication of the first modern English translation of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Stillman Drake was the most original and productive scholar of Galileo's scientific work of our age. During that time, he published sixteen books on Galileo, including translations of almost all the major writings, and Galileo at Work, the most comprehensive study of Galileo's life and works ever written. Drake also published about 130 papers, of which nearly 100 are on Galileo and the rest on related aspects of the history and philosophy of science. The three-volume collection Essays on Galileo and the History and Philosophy of Science includes 80 of those papers. Volume I contains a bibliography of the writings of Stillman Drake, biographical sketches of both Galileo and Drake, and various essays covering the broad range of Galileo's scientific endeavors, including outlines of the humanistic and religious background of his era. Other essays take up textual and bibliographical issues, analysing Galileo's mass of notes, treatises, and numerous fragments, previously collected in folios, manuscripts, and unreliable copies. Drake's wide-ranging essays cover Galileo's place in the philosophy of science, his relation to his forebears and impact on posterity, and his contribution to astronomy. In addition, the essays take up ongoing controversies, such as Galileo's stance on the affinity of science with the corpus of human knowledge. Volume I of Stillman Drake's Essays on Galileo and the History and Philosophy of Science serves as a comprehensive introduction to Galileo's life, science, and writings, and with its forthcoming companion volumes, will indeed be a fitting tribute to the memory of one of Canada's most accomplished scholars.

Since publication of Stillman Drake’s landmark volume, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography, new and exciting information has come to light about this towering figure in the history of Western science. Drawing largely from Galileo’s manuscript working papers, Drake now adds a wealth of detail to the story.Among the findings he presents in this volume are the steps that led to discovery of the pendulum law and the law of fall, by which Galileo opened the road to modern physics; Galileo’s path to the new astronomy of Copernicus, closely linked to his first essays in physics; his subsequent misgivings and final reassurances provided by the telescope.Drake focuses on Galileo’s pioneering work in physics, previously unknown, and shows that time has not diminished its value. He also considers some of the factors that played a part in the development of physics, its classical Greek beginnings, the medieval interlude, the contribution of some of Galileo’s contemporaries, and the resistance of others to his new science of motion. We see in a new light the relation of that science to modern dynamics, created by Newton half a century later. Galileo is better known as an astronomer than as a modern physicist. Drake sheds new light here too as he explores Galileo’s pioneer invention of satellite astronomy, his sighting of Neptune two and one-half centuries before that planet was identified, and his proposal of a cosmogony based on speeds of freely falling bodies. With this book Drake confirms Galileo as the first recognizably modern scientist, in both his methods and results.

For forty years, beginning with the publication of the first modern English translation of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Stillman Drake was the most original and productive scholar of Galileo's scientific work of our age. During that time, he published sixteen books on Galileo, including translations of almost all the major writings, and Galileo at Work, the most comprehensive study of Galileo's life and works ever written. Drake also published about 130 papers, of which nearly 100 are on Galileo and the rest on related aspects of the history and philosophy of science. The three-volume collection Essays on Galileo and the History and Philosophy of Science includes 80 of those papers. Volume I contains a bibliography of the writings of Stillman Drake, biographical sketches of both Galileo and Drake, and various essays covering the broad range of Galileo's scientific endeavors, including outlines of the humanistic and religious background of his era. Other essays take up textual and bibliographical issues, analysing Galileo's mass of notes, treatises, and numerous fragments, previously collected in folios, manuscripts, and unreliable copies. Drake's wide-ranging essays cover Galileo's place in the philosophy of science, his relation to his forebears and impact on posterity, and his contribution to astronomy. In addition, the essays take up ongoing controversies, such as Galileo's stance on the affinity of science with the corpus of human knowledge. Volume I of Stillman Drake's Essays on Galileo and the History and Philosophy of Science serves as a comprehensive introduction to Galileo's life, science, and writings, and with its forthcoming companion volumes, will indeed be a fitting tribute to the memory of one of Canada's most accomplished scholars.