Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo

This book collects a renowned scholar's essays from the past five decades and reflects two main concerns: an approach to logic that stresses argumentation, reasoning, and critical thinking and that is informal, empirical, naturalistic, practical, applied, concrete, and historical; and an interest in Galileo's life and thought-his scientific achievements, Inquisition trial, and methodological lessons in light of his iconic status as 'father of modern science.' These republished essays include many hard to find articles, out of print works, and chapters which are not available online. The collection provides an excellent resource of the author's lifelong dedication to the subject.

Thus, the book contains critical analyses of some key Galilean arguments about the laws of falling bodies and the Copernican hypothesis of the earth's motion. There is also a group of chapters in which Galileo's argumentation is compared and contrasted with that of other figures such as Socrates, Karl Marx, Giordano Bruno, and his musicologist father Vincenzo Galilei. The chapters on Galileo's trial illustrate an approach to the science-vs-religion issue which Finocchiaro labels 'para-clerical' and conceptualizes in terms of a judicious consideration of arguments for and against Galileo and the Church. Other essays examine argumentation about Galileo's life and thought by the major Galilean scholars of recent decades. The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, history of science, history of religion, philosophy of religion, argumentation, rhetoric, and communication studies.

Maurice Finocchiaro received his undergraduate education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in 'Humanities and Science,' specifically philosophy and physics. He did his graduate work in philosophy at the University of California-Berkeley, specializing in logic and philosophy of science: in logic he adopted an empirical and practical approach that emphasizes argumentation, reasoning, and critical thinking; and in philosophy of science he adopted a historical approach that aims to learn about the nature of science by studying important episodes in the history of science (e.g., the Copernican Revolution) and the work of great scientists (e.g., Galileo). He went on to teach at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, such courses as introductory philosophy, introductory logic, critical thinking, logical theory, history of science, science and religion, and philosophy of science. This teaching experience led him to find excellent material in Galileo: Galileo's scientific achievements for the historical approach to the philosophy of science; Galileo's trial by the Inquisition for the study of science vs. religion; and Galileo's critical argumentation about the earth's motion for the empirical approach to logic. This background and these experiences encouraged and sustained Finocchiaro's scholarship, which received the support of awards from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, and Guggenheim Foundation. His books include Galileo and the Art of Reasoning; Defending Copernicus and Galileo: Critical Reasoning in the Two Affairs; Arguments about Arguments; Meta-argumentation; and On Trial for Reason: Science, Religion, and Culture in the Galileo Affair.