『新科学論議』におけるガリレオの連続性概念

概要

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In the Discourses published in 1638, Galileo said that something continuous was composed of indivisibles. He had an opinion contrary to that of Aristotle. It is the purpose of this paper to clarify Galileo's concept of continuity and his concept of physics which he discussed in the Discourses. When Galileo explained the property of continuous materials in the first day of the Discourses, he presumed that an atom was of the same size as an indivisible. He constructed the line with an infinite number of points; the same number of voids as a model of metals and explained why a metal was extended as preserving its continuity. We notice that a line is continuous for Galileo but not for Aristotle, because the points on this line are not connected. Galileo represented his own concept of continuity with the above-mentioned statement. His continuity is also different from the property of density that has no condition for voids. When he treated accelerated motion in the third day of the Discourses, he described right-angled triangles and explained properties of accelerated motion, but he never calculated areas of triangles. He did not consider that the parallel lines constructed an area of a triangle and that there are voids among the lines. According to his notion of continuity, these conditions would be satisfied. He kept his own concept of continuity in the construction of his theory of motion.
日本科学史学会の論文
1995-01-20