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Galileo and the Continuity Thesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

William A. Wallace
William A. Wallace*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America
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Extract

In his review of my Prelude to Galileo (1981a), Ernan McMullin rejects my emendation of Pierre Duhem's “continuity thesis” wherein I develop the case for a pronounced medieval-scholastic influence on Galileo's science based on parallels between Galileo's early Latin compositions and lectures given by contemporary Jesuits at the Collegio Romano (McMullin 1983). He does so on two grounds: (1) that the evidence of derivation I provide, using textual parallels, is so strong that it refutes the claim for any intellectual influence, being a better instance of mindless copying than one of personal appropriation; and (2) that, in any event, the logical structure of the argument which I attribute to Galileo's mature work is not that of demonstration ex suppositione as understood by Aquinas, and so the example I provide of Galileo's use of suppositio “does not link him in any significant way to the specifically Thomist tradition of natural science” (1983, p. 173). An adequate reply to this critique would require the introduction of more historical evidence than would be appropriate for the pages of this journal. A few remarks, however, may be in order concerning such evidence which bears directly on McMullin's first ground, and concerning the implications of this evidence for contemporary philosophy of science, which bear on his second.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 504 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1984

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