Primary Sources: Galileo’s Works

The main body of Galileo’s work is collected in:

• Favaro, Antonio (ed.), 1890–1909, Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, Edizione Nazionale, 20 vols., Florence: Barbera; reprinted 1929–1939 and 1964–1966. [available online] (Scholar)

English translations:

• 1586, The Little Balance (La Bilancetta)
  • Fermi, Laura, and Bernardini, Gilberto (trans.) in Fermi, Laura, and Bernardini, Gilberto, 1961, Galileo and the Scientific Revolution, New York: Basic Books; reprinted 1965, New York: Fawcett; and 2003 and 2013, Mineola, NY: Dover. (Scholar)
• ca. 1590, On Motion (De Motu)
  • Drabkin, I. E. (trans.) in Galilei, Galileo, 1960, On Motion and On Mechanics, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. (Scholar)
  • Fredette, Raymond (trans.), 2000, De Motu Antiquiora, Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. [available online] (Scholar)
• ca. 1600, On Mechanics (Le Meccaniche)
  • Drake, Stillman (trans.) in Galilei, Galileo, 1960, On Motion and On Mechanics, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. (Scholar)
• 1606, Operations of the Geometric and Military Compass (Le Operazioni del Compasso Geometrico e Militare, Padua: Pietro Marinelli.)
  • Drake, Stillman (trans.), 1978, Operations of the Geometric and Military Compass, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Scholar)
• 1610, The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius, Venice: Thomas Baglioni.)
  • Van Helden, Albert (trans.), 1989, Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 2nd edition, 2016; reprinted, with facsimile of Library of Congress’s first edition and expository essays, in De Simone, Daniel, and John W. Hessler (eds.), 2013, The Starry Messenger: From Doubt to Astonishment, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress/Levenger Press. (Scholar)
  • Barker, Peter (trans.), 2004, Sidereus Nuncius, Oklahoma City: Byzantium Press. (Scholar)
  • Shea, William R. (trans.), 2009, Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, or A Sidereal Message, Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications; 2nd revised printing, 2012. (Scholar)
• 1612, Discourse on Floating Bodies (Discorso intorno alle Cose che Stanno in su l’Acqua, Florence: Cosimo Giunti.)
  • Drake, Stillman (trans.) in Drake, Stillman, 1984, Cause, Experiment, and Science, Chicago: Chicago University Press. (Scholar)
• 1613, Letters on the Sunspots (Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari, Rome: Giacomo Mascardi.)
  • Reeves, Eileen, and Van Helden, Albert (trans.) in Galilei, Galileo, and Scheiner, Christoph 2010, On Sunspots, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• 1623, The Assayer (Il Saggiatore, Rome: Giacomo Mascardi.)
  • Drake, Stillman (trans.), in Galilei, Galileo, Grassi, Horatio, Guiducci, Mario, and Kepler, Johannes, 1960, The Controversy on the Comets of 1618, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (Scholar)
• 1632, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo, Florence: Giovanni Batista Landini.)
  • Drake, Stillman (trans.), 1967, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Berkeley: University of California Press; reprinted 2001, New York: The Modern Library. (Scholar)
• 1638, Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche intorno a Due Nuove Scienze, Leiden: Elsevier.)
  • Crew, Henry, and de Salvio, Alfonso (trans.), 1954, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, New York: Dover Publications. This inferior translation, first published in 1914, has been reprinted numerous times and is widely available. (Scholar)
  • Drake, Stillman (trans.), 1974, [Discourses on the] Two New Sciences, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; 2nd edition, 1989, reprinted 2000, Toronto: Wall and Emerson. (Scholar)

Collections of primary sources in English:

• Drake, Stillman (ed.), 1957, The Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, New York: Anchor Books. (Scholar)
• Finocchiaro, Maurice A. (ed.), 1989, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History, Berkeley: University of California Press. (Scholar)
• Finocchiaro, Maurice A. (ed.), 2008, The Essential Galileo, Indianapolis: Hackett. (Scholar)
• Shea, William R., and Davie, Mark (ed.), 2012, Galileo: Selected Writings, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Scholar)

Secondary Sources

• Adams, Marcus P., Zvi Biener, Uljana Feest, and Jacqueline A. Sullivan (eds.), 2017, Eppur si Muove: Doing History and Philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer, Dordrecht: Springer. (Scholar)
• Biagioli, Mario, 1990, “Galileo’s System of Patronage,” History of Science, 28 (1): 1–62. (Scholar)
• –––, 1993, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 2006, Galileo’s Instruments of Credit: Telescopes, Images, Secrecy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• Biener, Zvi, 2004, “Galileo’s First New Science: The Science of Matter,” Perspectives on Science, 12 (3): 262–287. (Scholar)
• Brown, James Robert, and Yiftach Fehige, 2019, “Thought Experiments,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), E. N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/thought-experiment/>. (Scholar)
• Bucciantini, Massimo, Michele Camerota, and Franco Giudice, 2015, Galileo’s Telescope: A European Story, C. Bolton (trans.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Carugo, Adriano, and Alistair C. Crombie, 1983, “The Jesuits and Galileo’s Ideas of Science and Nature,” Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze, 8 (2): 3–68. (Scholar)
• Clagett, Marshall, 1959, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. (Scholar)
• Coyne, George V., 2005, “The Church’s Most Recent Attempt to Dispel the Galileo Myth,” in E. McMullin (ed.), The Church and Galileo, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 340–359. (Scholar)
• Crombie, Alistair C., 1975, “Sources of Galileo’s Early Natural Philosophy,” in M. L. R. Bonelli and W. R. Shea (eds.), Reason, Experiment, and Mysticism in the Scientific Revolution, New York: Science History Publications, pp. 157–175. (Scholar)
• Dear, Peter, 1995, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• Dijksterhuis, E. J., 1961, The Mechanization of the World Picture, C. Dikshoorn (trans.), Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Scholar)
• Drake, Stillman, 1976, Galileo Against the Philosophers, Los Angeles: Zeitlin & Ver Brugge. (Scholar)
• –––, 1978, Galileo at Work, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 1999, Essays on Galileo and the History and Philosophy of Science, N. M. Swerdlow and T. H. Levere (eds.), 3 vols, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (Scholar)
• Duhem, Pierre, 1954, Le Systeme du monde, 6 vols, Paris: Hermann. (Scholar)
• –––, 1985, To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo, A. Roger (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• Fantoli, Annibale, 2005, “The Disputed Injunction and Its Role in Galileo’s Trial,” in E. McMullin (ed.), The Church and Galileo, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 117–149. (Scholar)
• Feldhay, Rivka, 1995, Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition or Critical Dialogue?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 1998, “The Use and Abuse of Mathematical Entities,” in P. Machamer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 80–145. (Scholar)
• Feyerabend, Paul, 1975, Against Method, London and New York: Verso and Humanities Press. (Scholar)
• Finocchiaro, Maurice A., 1980, Galileo and the Art of Reasoning, Dordrecht: D. Reidel. (Scholar)
• –––, 2005, Retrying Galileo, 1633–1992, Berkeley: University of California Press. (Scholar)
• Galluzzi, Paolo, 1979, Momento: Studi Galileiani, Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo e Bizzarri. (Scholar)
• Gattei, Stefano, 2019, On the Life of Galileo: Viviani’s Historical Account and Other Early Biographies, Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Scholar)
• Gaukroger, Stephen, 2006, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Scholar)
• Gendler, Tamar Szabó, 1998, “Galileo and the Indispensability of Scientific Thought Experiment,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49 (3): 397–424. (Scholar)
• Geymonat, Ludovico, 1954, Galileo: A Biography and Inquiry into his Philosophy of Science, S. Drake (trans.), New York: McGraw Hill. (Scholar)
• Giusti, Enrico, 1993, Euclides Reformatus. La Teoria delle Proporzioni nella Scuola Galileiana, Turin: Bottati-Boringhieri. (Scholar)
• Graney, Christopher M., 2015, Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. (Scholar)
• Heilbron, John L., 2010, Galileo, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Scholar)
• Hooper, Wallace, 1998, “Inertial Problems in Galileo’s Preinertial Framework,” in P. Machamer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 146–174. (Scholar)
• Jardine, Nicholas, 1976, “Galileo’s Road to Truth and the Demonstrative Regress,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 7 (4): 277–318. (Scholar)
• Kepler, Johannes, 1610, Dissertation cum Nuncio Sidereo, Prague; translated as Kepler’s Conversation with Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger, E. Rosen (trans.), New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965. (Scholar)
• Koyré, Alexandre, 1966, Études Galiléennes, Paris: Hermann; translated as Galileo Studies, J. Mepham (trans.), Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978. (Scholar)
• Lennox, James G., 1986, “Aristotle, Galileo and the ‘Mixed Sciences’,” in W. A. Wallace (ed.), Reinterpreting Galileo, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, pp. 29–52. (Scholar)
• Lindberg, David C., and Robert S. Westman (eds.), 1990, Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• Machamer, Peter, 1976, “Fictionalism and Realism in 16th Century Astronomy,” in R. S. Westman (ed.), The Copernican Achievement, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 346–353. (Scholar)
• –––, 1978, “Galileo and the Causes,” in R. Butts and J. C. Pitt (eds.), New Perspectives on Galileo, Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 161–180. (Scholar)
• –––, 1991, “The Person-Centered Rhetoric of the Seventeenth Century,” in M. Pera and W. R. Shea (eds.), Persuading Science: The Art of Scientific Rhetoric, Canton, MA: Science History Publications, pp. 143–156. (Scholar)
• –––, 1998a, “Galileo’s Machines, His Mathematics, and His Experiments,” in P. Machamer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 53–79. (Scholar)
• –––, 1998b, “Introduction,” in P. Machamer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–26. (Scholar)
• –––, 1999, “Galileo and the Rhetoric of Relativity,” Science and Education, 8 (2): 111–120; reprinted in E. Gianetto, F. Bevilacqua, and M. R. Matthews (eds.), 2001, Science Education and Culture: The Contribution of History and Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 31–40. (Scholar)
• Machamer, Peter, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver, 2000, “Thinking about Mechanisms,” Philosophy of Science, 67: 1–25. (Scholar)
• Machamer, Peter, and Brian Hepburn, 2004, “Galileo and the Pendulum: Latching on to Time,” Science and Education, 13: 333–347; reprinted in M. R. Matthews, C. F. Gauld, and A. Stinner (eds.), 2005, The Pendulum: Scientific, Historical, Philosophical and Educational Perspectives, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 99–113. (Scholar)
• Machamer, Peter, and Andrea Woody, 1994, “A Model of Intelligibility in Science: Using Galileo’s Balance as a Model for Understanding the Motion of Bodies,” Science and Education, 3 (3): 215–244. (Scholar)
• Mayer, Thomas F. (ed.), 2012, The Trial of Galileo 1612–1633, North York, Ontario: University of Toronto Press. (Scholar)
• McMullin, Ernan (ed.), 1967, Galileo, Man of Science, New York: Basic Books. (Scholar)
• –––, 1998, “Galileo on Science and Scripture,” in P. Machamer (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 271–347. (Scholar)
• ––– (ed.), 2005, The Church and Galileo: Religion and Science, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. (Scholar)
• Miller, David Marshall, 2008, “The Thirty Years War and the Galileo Affair,” History of Science, 46: 49–74. (Scholar)
• –––, 2018, “Regressus and Empiricism in the Controversy about Galileo’s Lunar Observations,” Perspectives on Science, 26 (3): 293–324. (Scholar)
• Moody, Ernest A., 1951, “Galileo and Avempace: The Dynamics of the Leaning Tower Experiment,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 12: 163–193, 375–422. (Scholar)
• Moss, Jean Dietz, 1993, Novelties in the Heavens, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• Osler, Margaret, 2000, Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• Palmerino, Carla Rita, 2016, “Reading the Book of Nature: The Ontological and Epistemological Underpinnings of Galileo’s Mathematical Realism,” in G. Gorham, B. Hill, E. Slowik, and C. K. Waters (eds.), The Language of Nature: Reassessing the Mathematization of Natural Philosophy the Seventeenth Century, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 29–50. (Scholar)
• Palmerino, Carla Rita, and Johannes M. M. H. Thijssen (eds.), 2004, The Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in Seventeenth-Century Europe, Dordrecht: Springer. (Scholar)
• Palmieri, Paolo, 1998, “Re-examining Galileo’s Theory of Tides,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 53: 223–375. (Scholar)
• –––, 2001, “The Obscurity of the Equimultiples: Clavius’ and Galileo’s Foundational Studies of Euclid’s Theory of Proportions,” Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences, 55 (6): 555–597. (Scholar)
• –––, 2003, “Mental Models in Galileo’s Early Mathematization of Nature,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 34: 229–264. (Scholar)
• –––, 2004, “The Cognitive Development of Galileo’s Theory of Buoyancy,” Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences, 59: 189–222. (Scholar)
• –––, 2005, “‘Spuntar lo scoglio piu duro’: Did Galileo Ever Think the Most Beautiful Thought Experiment in the History of Science?,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 36 (2): 223–240. (Scholar)
• –––, 2008, Reenacting Galileo’s Experiments: Rediscovering the Techniques of Seventeenth-Century Science, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. (Scholar)
• Peterson, Mark A., 2011, Galileo’s Muse: Renaissance Mathematics and the Arts, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Pitt, Joseph C., 1992, Galileo, Human Knowledge, and the Book of Nature: Method Replaces Metaphysics, Dordrecht: Springer. (Scholar)
• Raphael, Renee, 2011, “Making Sense of Day 1 of the Two New Sciences: Galileo’s Aristotelian-Inspired Agenda and His Jesuit Readers,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 42: 479–491. (Scholar)
• Redondi, Pietro, 1983, Galileo Eretico, Turin: Einaudi; translated as Galileo Heretic, R. Rosenthal (trans.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. (Scholar)
• Reeves, Eileen, 2008, Galileo’s Glassworks: The Telescope and the Mirror, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Scholar)
• Renn, Jürgen, Peter Damerow, and Simone Rieger, 2000, “Hunting the White Elephant: When and How did Galileo Discover the Law of Fall?,” Science in Context, 13 (3-4): 299–419; reprinted in J. Renn (ed.), 2005, Galileo in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 29–149. (Scholar)
• Rossi, Paolo, 1962, I Filosofi e le Macchine, Milan: Feltrinelli. (Scholar)
• Roux, Sophie, and Daniel Garber (eds.), 2013, The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, New York: Springer. (Scholar)
• Segre, Michael, 1991, In the Wake of Galileo, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 1998, “The Never-Ending Galileo Story,” in P. Machamer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 388–416. (Scholar)
• Settle, Thomas, 1967, “Galileo’s Use of Experiment as a Tool of Investigation,” in E. McMullin (ed.), Galileo, Man of Science, New York: Basic Books, pp. 315–337. (Scholar)
• –––, 1983, “Galileo and Early Experimentation,” in R. Aris, H. T. Davis, and R. H. Stuewer (eds.), Springs of Scientific Creativity: Essays on Founders of Modern Science, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3–20. (Scholar)
• –––, 1992, “Experimental Research and Galilean Mechanics,” in M. B. Ceolin (ed.), Galileo Scientist: His Years at Padua and Venice, Padua: Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, pp. 39–57. (Scholar)
• Shapere, Dudley, 1974, Galileo: A Philosophical Study, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• Shapin, Steven, 1996, The Scientific Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• Shea, William R., 1972, Galileo’s Intellectual Revolution, New York: Science History Publications. (Scholar)
• Shea, William R., and Mariano Artigas, 2003, Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 2006, Galileo Observed: Science and the Politics of Belief, Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications. (Scholar)
• Sobel, Dava, 1999, Galileo’s Daughter, New York: Walker and Company. (Scholar)
• Spranzi, Marta, 2004, Galilee. Le Dialogue sur les deux grands systemes du monde: Rhetorique, dialectique et démonstration, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. (Scholar)
• –––, 2004, “Galileo and the Mountains of the Moon: Analogical Reasoning, Models and Metaphors in Scientific Discovery,” Journal of Cognition and Culture 4 (3): 451–483. (Scholar)
• Valleriani, Matteo, 2010, Galileo Engineer, Dordrecht: Springer. (Scholar)
• Van Fraassen, Bas C., 1980, The Scientific Image, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Scholar)
• Wallace, William A., 1984, Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo’s Science, Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 1992, Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. (Scholar)
• Westman, Robert (ed.), 1976, The Copernican Achievement, Berkeley: University of California Press. (Scholar)
• Wilding, Nick, 2014, Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• Wisan, W. L., 1974, “The New Science of Motion: A Study of Galileo’s De motu locali,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 13 (2-3): 103–306. (Scholar)
• Wootton, David, 2010, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 2015, The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution, New York: Harper Collins. (Scholar)