Publication details

Galileo Galilei : Prubíř

Title in English Galileo Galilei : The Assayer
Authors

LEDVOŇOVÁ Markéta ŠPELDA Daniel ŠTEFL Vladimír MALÁ Jana

Year of publication 2020
Type Monograph
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Science

Citation
Description In this book, we present to the Czech reader a translation of the work of Galileo Galilei The Assayer (Il Saggiatore, 1623). In this writing, Galileo led a controversy with the Jesuit astronomer Orazio Grassi, who embodied his views in a small book Astronomical and Philosophical Balance (Libra astronomica ac philosophica, 1619). Galileo criticizes every part of Grassi's Balance, and that is what the structure of the Assayer corresponds to. Galileo divided Ballance into numbered sections, which he quoted in his book and accompanied by his own commentary. He gradually covered the entire text of the Balance which is printed in italics in our translation as well as in the original edition of 1623. Like many other 17th-century texts, Galileo's Assayer contains ideas that we would now divide into philosophical and scientific, although in the early modern times these disciplines did not differ as they do today. We have therefore accompanied the text of Galileo's Assayer with two introductions. The first introduction by Daniel Špelda deals with the context of the work and the philosophical motifs that appear in The Assayer. In his introduction, Vladimír Štefl focuses on astronomical and optical topics. We hope our prefaces will make it easier for modern readers to understand Galileo's text.
Related projects:

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.

More info