Galileo’s reasons between science, technology, and epistemology

Fabio Minazzi, Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Varese, Italy

Background: Galileo’s Dialogo offers the opportunity to follow the conceptual change that led Galileo to transform from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican. This shift involved a re-evaluation of how scientific knowledge is understood to originate. Objectives: This paper analyzes Galileo’s Dialogo to trace this conceptual change from Ptolemaic to Copernican views. A primary objective is to outline Galileo’s resulting epistemological conception, specifically how he rethought the traditional empiricist image for explaining the genesis of science. Method: The analysis is grounded in a hermeneutic-internalist reading of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Results: In outlining his conceptual change, Galileo emphasizes how the traditional empiricist image to explain the genesis of science is to be rethought and replaced with an epistemological conception by virtue of which our theories must “do violence to sense” in order to build theories based on an assumption ex suppositione Conclusion: For Galileo, too, the role and function of experience remain decisive, but for him only experimental experience can determine whether a theoretical prediction is correct or incorrect.

Keywords: Experience. Reason. Experimental dimension. Conjecture. Predictions. Epistemology.