Milli mála - 01.01.2010, Page 252

polemica of rare, disruptive efficacy. It is not by chance that in the
same letter to gualdo, galileo asks gualdo himself, and, by his
intercession, Signor Sandeli, to translate the first of the three letters
which form the Istoria, in order to give not only ‘apelle’ (alias
Scheiner), but also the scientific community abroad the ability to
understand its content:
[…] I should also like apelle and the others [the scientists]
who live over the alps to have the possibility to see it
[galileo is referring to the first of the three letters]; and as I
am very busy I would ask Your Excellency and Mr. Sandeli
a favour; and I especially ask him to be so kind as to trans-
late it into Latin as soon as possible and then to send it back
to me, since in rome there is someone who will take care of
publishing it, together with some other letters of mine.6
The intention is not to determine whether, and how well, galileo
was versed in Latin; Sidereus Nuncius is sufficient testimony to
remove any doubt in this sense. Of course, the request to the
addressees to ‘translate’ the letter into Latin seems proof of the fact
that galileo felt the urge to announce (to his opponents above all)
his own position on a specific scientific dispute. But the aim of the
translation of the letter is also to impress and possibly upset his
opponents by showing them all the potential power that character-
izes galileo’s setting-out of the debate, the power of pure dialectic
irony. It is precisely this dialectic irony that constitutes a funda-
mental expression of galileo’s ‘literature’. Perhaps the fact that
Sidereus Nuncius is the last of galileo’s works written in Latin is
not a coincidence.
after writing this essay, galileo left Padua to settle in Florence,
and thereafter countered all opposition by using the vernacular, not
because Latin was inappropriate, but because he seems to feel that,
in his own politically delicate situation, Latin is not guaranteed to
support scientific reasoning. By using the vernacular galileo adds
SIMILarITIES BETWEEn SCIEnTIFIC LanguagE …
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6 “vorrei che anco l’apelle e gl’altri oltramontani potessero vederla [the letter]; e qui, per
esser io occupatissimo, avrei bisogno del favore di V.S. e del S. Sandeli, il quale mi faces-
se grazia di trasferirla quanto prima in latino e mandarmela poi subito, perché in roma è chi
si è preso cura di farla stampare insieme con alcune altre mie.” galileo galilei, “Letter to
Paolo gualdo”, ibid, Vol. XI, p. 327, (accessed november 3, 2010).
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