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entific distortions. among the most recent and significant exam-
ples, one can quote S. Timpanaro Senior, who sees in galilean dis-
course the “ability to find ingenious and plausible argumentations
even for false assertions”98. an admirer of galileo, alexandre
Koyré, nonetheless describes the Dialogue Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems (1632) as “in fact, not a book about astrono-
my, not even about physics.”99 referring to the body of galileo’s
work (from The Assayer to the Dialogue), he notices in it a “mix-
ture of ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’”100, and accentuates the “impos-
sibility, for any historian who has not given up all effort to under-
stand them, of divorcing these two integral aspects of galileo’s
thought.”101 In Paul Feyerabend’s opinion, galileo “exhibited a
style, a sense of humour, an elasticity and elegance, and an aware-
ness of the valuable weakness of human thinking, which has never
been equalled in the history of science.”102 nonetheless he states
that, due to its distortions, “galileo’s science rests on an illustrat-
ed metaphysics.”103
In a significant passage of The Assayer, galileo maintains that
Sarsi pretends to know neither nature nor poetry, and ignores the
fact that fantasy and fiction are so necessary to poetry that the lat-
ter could not exist without them; at the same time those ‘lies’ are
so abhorred by nature that it is more difficult to find even one of
them in nature than to find darkness in the light.104 galileo levels
cutting remarks at Tasso for his pretensions of realism, or, better
put, of verisimilitude. In the same way, galileo satirically picks on
Sarsi when he claims to know reality, not for having repeatedly and
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98 “abilitá di trovare, anche per le proposizioni false, ingegnosi ed apparenti discorsi di proba-
bilità”, S. Timpanaro Senior, Primato di Galileo, in Galilei, Opere, vol. II, Milano: rizzoli,
1936, p. 70, in andrea Battistini, Galileo e i gesuiti, p. 128 (footnote 12).
99 alexandre Koyré, Galileo Studies, Hassocks, Sussex: The Harvester Press Limited, 1978, p.
158. First published in France by Hermann & Cie, Editeurs as Etudes Galiléennes, 1978.
100 Ibid, p. 158.
101 Ibid, p. 158.
102 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, London-new York: Verso, 1993 [first edition, 1975], p.
121.
103 Ibid, p. 121.
104 “[Sarsi finge] di non conoscere o la natura o la poesia, e di non sapere che alla poesia sono
in maniera necessarie le favole e finzioni, che senza quelle non puó essere; le quali bugie
son poi tanto aborrite dalla natura, che non meno impossibil cosa è il ritrovarvene pur una,
che il trovar tenebre nella luce.” galileo galilei, Il Saggiatore, p. 42.
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