Galileo, modern science and the principle of inertia

The rise of modern science and indeed the characterization of the same modern age has often been related to the formulation of the principle of inertia. From this epistemic perspective, Galileo should also have been the author of this principle at the roots of the mechanist conception of Nature. From the historical point of view, Galileỏs authorship and authority was evocated by Newton, and then all the historical reconstructions were done on the basis of the presupposition of a continuous, linear and progressive evolution of modern science by means of anachronistic reinterpretation of the previous history in Newtonian terms. The trial by Alexandre Koyré to refute the attribution of the principle of inertia to Galileo was not complete and defective, partially reproducing the same misunderstanding of Galileo in Newtonian terms. The deconstruction of this fallacious historical reconstruction here presented points out how Galileo did not accept the persistence of rest and did never consider matter as inert and uniform rectilinear motion on an indefinite plane as a free natural motion but rather as a constrained motion. This conclusion forces us to give a new, more complex, insight of the rise of modern science, which in Galileo appears to be not yet related to the formulation of the inertia principle and to a correspondent mechanist conception of Nature.

Si dimostra che Galileo non ha mai proposto un principo d'inerzia. Questo errore storiografico ancora oggi mantenuto è legato a un ricostruzione a posteriori della storia della scienza, in particolare a partire da Newton.