GALILEI, Galileo.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Opere, divise in quattro tomi, In questa nuova Edizione accresciute di molti cose inedite. First edition thus of the great scientist's collected works, the first to include the contentious Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo. This edition of the Dialogo is the first approved by Catholic censors and the first appearance anywhere of the text under its modern title.While Galileo was charged with heresy for supporting Copernicanism in the first edition of the Dialogo in 1632, by the mid-18th century most Catholic astronomers had come to tacitly accept the heliocentric system. The present edition was supervised by Giuseppi Toaldo (1719-1797), then a seminary priest and later professor of astronomy at the University of Padua. Galileo's text is essentially intact, Toaldo intervening only to re-emphasize the hypothetical nature of his speculations, and to introduce the modern title (the first edition was published as the Dialogo del flusso e riflusso). For good measure, he added the text of Galileo's 1633 sentence and a preface emphasizing mankind's irredeemable ignorance. This edition includes such other fundamental Galilean works as the Sidereus Nuncius (1610) and the Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (1638). The first edition of Galileo's collected works was published in two volumes in 1656.

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