Galileo Team #2
Defend Copernicanism further by showing how Galileo addresses the problems of motion coupled with the Earth's rotation (thereby implying further that the 1616 edict listing Copernicanism as heretical is unjustified).
- If the earth is moving, why (according to Galileo) do we not feel it? Why are there no great winds? Why are objects not hurled outward from the rotating Earth? Why do objects dropped from a great height fall directly underneath where they are dropped? Present the various problems and explain how Galileo solves them through the concept of relative motion.
- Discuss Galileo's theory of the tides and why he considers it so important (for example, why he first wrote about it to Cardinal Orsini in 1616).
- Discuss how Galileo further explains the timing of the tides, and their monthly and annual variations.
Bibliography
On relative motion, see:
Day 2 of the Dialogue, starting p. 132.
Finocchiaro's Galileo on the World Systems (his commentary on how Galileo addressed objections, pp. 323-325, 332, footnotes for pp.142-212)
Swerdlow's Chap. 7 in Machamer (1998)
On the tides, see:
Heilbron's Introduction (!), pp. xii-xv.
[essential] Day 4 of the Dialogue
[perhaps] Galileo's 1616 "Discourse on the flux and reflux of the sea," reprinted in Finnocchiaro's Galileo Affair
Fantoli's Galileo: For Copernicanism and the Church
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