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[Illustration: Galileo Galilei]
THE
LIFE
OF
GALILEO GALILEI,
WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ADVANCEMENT
OF
EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
MDCCCXXX.
LONDON.
LIFE OF GALILEO:
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.
_Introduction._
THE knowledge which we at present possess of the phenomena of nature and
of their connection has not by any means been regularly progressive, as
we might have expected, from the time when they first drew the attention
of mankind. Without entering into the question touching the scientific
acquirements of eastern nations at a remote period, it is certain that
some among the early Greeks were in possession of several truths,
however acquired, connected with the economy of the universe, which were
afterwards suffered to fall into neglect and oblivion. But the
philosophers of the old school appear in general to have confined
themselves at the best to observations; very few traces remain of their
having instituted _experiments_, properly so called. This putting of
nature to the torture, as Bacon calls it, has occasioned the principal
part of modern philosophical discoveries. The experimentalist may so
order his examination of nature as to vary at pleasure the circumstances
in which it is made, often to discard accidents which complicate the
general appearances, and at once to bring any theory which he may form
to a decisive test. The province of the mere observer is necessarily
limited: the power of selection among the phenomena to be presented is
in great measure denied to him, and he may consider himself fortunate if
they are such as to lead him readily to a knowledge of the laws which
they follow.
Perhaps to this imperfection of method it may be attributed that natural
philosophy continued to be stationary, or even to decline, during a long
series of ages, until little more than two centuries ago. Within this
comparatively short period it has rapidly reached a degree of perfection
so different from its former degraded state, that we can hardly
institute any comparison between the two. Before that epoch, a few
insulated facts, such as might first happen to be noticed, often
inaccurately observed and always too hastily generalized, were found
sufficient to excite the naturalist's lively imagination; and having
once pleased his fancy with the supposed fitness of his artificial
scheme, his perverted ingenuity was thenceforward employed in forcing
the observed phenomena into an imaginary agreement with the result of
his theory; instead of taking the more rational, and it should seem, the
more obvious, method of correcting the theory by the result of his
observations, and considering the one merely as the general and
abbreviated expression of the other. But natural phenomena were not then
valued on their own account, and for the proofs which they afford of a
vast and beneficent design in the structure of the universe, so much as
for the fertile topics which the favourite mode of viewing the subject
supplied to the spirit of scholastic disputation: and it is a
humiliating reflection that mankind never reasoned so ill as when they
most professed to cultivate the art of reasoning. However specious the
objects, and alluring the announcements of this art, the then prevailing
manner of studying it curbed and corrupted all that is free and noble in
the human mind. Innumerable fallacies lurked every where among the most
generally received opinions, and crowds of dogmatic and self-sufficient
pedants fully justified the lively definition, that "logic is the art of
talking unintelligibly on things of which we are ignorant."[1]
The error which lay at the root of the philosophy of the middle ages was
this:—from the belief that general laws and universal principles might
be discovered, of which the natural phenomena were _effects_, it was
thought that the proper order of study was, first to detect the general
_cause_, and then to pursue it into its consequences; it was considered
absurd to begin with the effect instead of the cause; whereas the real
choice lay between proceeding from particular facts to general facts,
or from general facts to particular facts; and it was under this
misrepresentation of the real question that all the sophistry lurked. As
soon as it is well understood that the general _cause_ is no other than
a single fact, common to a great number of phenomena, it is necessarily
perceived that an accurate scrutiny of these latter must precede any
safe reasoning with respect to the former. But at the time of which we
are speaking, those who adopted this order of reasoning, and who began
their inquiries by a minute and sedulous investigation of facts, were
treated with disdain, as men who degraded the lofty name of philosophy
by bestowing it upon mere mechanical operations. Among the earliest and
noblest of these was Galileo.
It is common, especially in this country, to name Bacon as the founder
of the present school of experimental philosophy; we speak of the
Baconian or inductive method of reasoning as synonimous and convertible
terms, and we are apt to overlook what Galileo had already done before
Bacon's writings appeared. Certainly the Italian did not range over the
circle of the sciences with the supreme and searching glance of the
English philosopher, but we find in every part of his writings
philosophical maxims which do not lose by comparison with those of
Bacon; and Galileo deserves the additional praise, that he himself gave
to the world a splendid practical illustration of the value of the
principles which he constantly recommended. In support of this view of
the comparative deserts of these two celebrated men, we are able to
adduce the authority of Hume, who will be readily admitted as a
competent judge of philosophical merit, where his prejudices cannot bias
his decision. Discussing the character of Bacon, he says, "If we
consider the variety of talents displayed by this man, as a public
speaker, a man of business, a wit, a courtier, a companion, an author, a
philosopher, he is justly the object of great admiration. If we consider
him merely as an author and philosopher, the light in which we view him
at present, though very estimable, he was yet inferior to his
contemporary Galileo, perhaps even to Kepler. Bacon pointed out at a
distance the road to true philosophy: Galileo both pointed it out to
others, and made himself considerable advances in it. The Englishman was
ignorant of geometry: the Florentine revived that science, excelled in
it, and was the first that applied it, together with experiment, to
natural philosophy. The former rejected with the most positive disdain
the system of Copernicus: the latter fortified it with new proofs
derived both from reason and the senses."[2]
If we compare them from another point of view, not so much in respect of
their intrinsic merit, as of the influence which each exercised on the
philosophy of his age, Galileo's superior talent or better fortune, in
arresting the attention of his contemporaries, seems indisputable. The
fate of the two writers is directly opposed the one to the other;
Bacon's works seem to be most studied and appreciated when his readers
have come to their perusal, imbued with knowledge and a philosophical
spirit, which, however, they have attained independently of his
assistance. The proud appeal to posterity which he uttered in his will,
"For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to
foreign nations, and the next ages," of itself indicates a consciousness
of the fact that his contemporary countrymen were but slightly affected
by his philosophical precepts. But Galileo's personal exertions changed
the general character of philosophy in Italy: at the time of his death,
his immediate pupils had obtained possession of the most celebrated
universities, and were busily engaged in practising and enforcing the
lessons which he had taught them; nor was it then easy to find there a
single student of natural philosophy who did not readily ascribe the
formation of his principles to the direct or remote influence of
Galileo's example. Unlike Bacon's, his reputation, and the value of his
writings, were higher among his contemporaries than they have since
become. This judgment perhaps awards the highest intellectual prize to
him whose disregarded services rise in estimation with the advance of
knowledge; but the praise due to superior usefulness belongs to him who
succeeded in training round him a school of imitators, and thereby
enabled his imitators to surpass himself.
The biography of men who have devoted themselves to philosophical
pursuits seldom affords so various and striking a succession of
incidents as that of a soldier or statesman. The life of a man who is
shut up during the greater part of his time in his study or laboratory
supplies but scanty materials for personal details; and the lapse of
time rapidly removes from us the opportunities of preserving such
peculiarities as might have been worth recording. An account of it will
therefore consist chiefly in a review of his works and opinions, and of
the influence which he and they have exercised over his own and
succeeding ages. Viewed in this light, few lives can be considered more
interesting than that of Galileo; and if we compare the state in which
he found, with that in which he left, the study of nature, we shall feel
how justly an enthusiastic panegyric pronounced upon the age immediately
following him may be transferred to this earlier period. "This is the
age wherein all men's minds are in a kind of fermentation, and the
spirit of wisdom and learning begins to mount and free itself from those
drossie and terrene impediments wherewith it has been so long clogged,
and from the insipid phlegm and _caput mortuum_ of useless notions in
which it hath endured so violent and long a fixation. This is the age
wherein, methinks, philosophy comes in with a spring tide, and the
peripatetics may as well hope to stop the current of the tide, or, with
Xerxes, to fetter the ocean, as hinder the overflowing of free
philosophy. Methinks I see how all the old rubbish must be thrown away,
and the rotten buildings be overthrown and carried away, with so
powerful an inundation. These are the days that must lay a new
foundation of a more magnificent philosophy, never to be overthrown,
that will empirically and sensibly canvass the phenomena of nature,
deducing the causes of things from such originals in nature as we
observe are producible by art, and the infallible demonstration of
mechanics: and certainly this is the way, and no other, to build a true
and permanent philosophy."[3]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Ménage.
[2] Hume's England, James I.
[3] Power's Experimental Philosophy, 1663.