Critique of the Ship-Experiment Argument
Document Type
Book Section
Publication Date
8-29-2021
Publication Title
Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo
Publisher
Springer, Cham
Publisher Location
Cham, Switzerland
Volume
40
First page number:
59
Last page number:
82
Abstract
This essay is part of a critical comparison between Galileo’s defense of Copernicanism and the defense of Galileo from the many attempts to criticize his reasoning or to justify his condemnation by the Inquisition. In such a context, I examine the anti-Copernican argument based on the ship’s mast experiment: that the earth cannot rotate because on a moving ship bodies dropped from the top of the mast lag behind, landing astern from its foot. Galileo criticized this argument with (1) a critical counter-argument questioning the analogy between a moving ship and a rotating earth; (2) a theoretical counter-argument concluding that on a moving ship falling bodies do not lag behind; and (3) an actual experiment refuting the anti-Copernican empirical claim. My discussion involves various aspects of the logic, methodology, history, historiography, and physics of such an experiment.
Controlled Subject
Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642; Inquisition; Logic; Reasoning
Disciplines
Philosophy | Philosophy of Science
Language
English
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Repository Citation
Finocchiaro, M. A.
(2021).
Critique of the Ship-Experiment Argument.
Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo, 40
59-82.
Cham, Switzerland: Springer, Cham.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77147-8_5