Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican
SynopsisPlot
Using the dialogue form, a genre common in classical philosophical works, Galileo masterfully demonstrates the truth of the Copernican system over the Ptolemaic one, proving, for the first time, that the earth revolves around the sun. Its influence is incalculable. The Dialogue is not only one of the most important scientific treatises ever written, but a work of supreme clarity and accessibility, remaining as readable now as when it was first published. This edition uses the definitive text established by the University of California Press, in Stillman Drake’s translation, and includes a Foreword by Albert Einstein and a new Introduction by J. L. Heilbron.
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About this book
Printed in Florence in 1632, Galileo Galilei's Dialogue stages a conversation among three speakers who compare two accounts of the heavens: the older Ptolemaic picture, with Earth fixed at the centre, and the Copernican one, in which Earth travels around the Sun. Salviati presents the Copernican reasoning, Simplicio defends the traditional view, and Sagredo questions both men. Writing philosophy as conversation was an old classical practice.
Galileo builds his case from observation and argument rather than authority, discussing falling bodies, ships, and the motion of the tides to show why a spinning, orbiting Earth need not feel as if it moves. Because the work argued so plainly for the Copernican side, it became the immediate reason for his trial before the Inquisition, and the book was banned. He lived his last years under house arrest.
This edition prints Stillman Drake's English translation of the text as settled by the University of California Press. It carries a foreword by Albert Einstein and an introduction by J. L. Heilbron, which set the discussion in its seventeenth-century context. Galileo wrote in Italian rather than Latin, which put the debate within reach of readers outside the universities.
