“However, anyone who imagines Galileo as a strictly experimental ‘fly-leg counter’ is mistaken: Galileo often worked solely on the basis of assumptions, or he simply made up the measurement results he claimed to have obtained. Galileo effectively conjured up the resulting laws by simply referring his readers to an alleged hundredfold or even thousandfold verification.”
Next is a pendulum experiment allegedly conducted by Galileo Galilei (two pendulums of different sizes swinging synchronously in a vacuum), regarding which a certain Jens Pukies made contradictory observations in the 1970s and 1980s.
He says: “Galileo’s experiment succeeds only with small deflections (approx. 10°) and relatively few oscillations. This shows that Galileo could never have carried out his experiment, which he described so precisely.”
He probably didn’t carry it out anyway, but likely didn’t “imagine” it correctly, which was probably his usual method, as he writes in a letter: “I conducted an experiment, but beforehand, natural reason had convinced me quite firmly that the phenomenon must proceed in this way.”
Accordingly, Galileo never concerned himself particularly with experimental results, measurement data, etc., but instead immediately presented the “imagined” regularity....
Furthermore:
In other, albeit few, experiments, the figurehead of empiricism and inductionism omits his usual assurance “I have checked this many times” entirely: “I am certain, without experiments, that the result will be as I tell you, for it must be so.”
A certain Blumenberg wrote gloomily on this subject in his preface to *Sidereus Nuncius*: “That famous little mouse, which, with historical interest, could have observed Galileo’s research activities from its corner, would likely have been very disappointed by what actually corresponded to reality regarding the hundredfold verification that Galileo assured for his law of falling bodies; how sparse the data was, and how far, due to the inadequacy of the experimental conditions and measurement methods, it actually concealed the assumed laws within its tolerances.”
In other, albeit few, experiments, the figurehead of empiricism and inductionism omits his usual assurance “I have checked this many times” entirely: “I am certain, without experiments, that the result will be as I tell you, for it must be so.”
Irmgard Dümotz, Lexikon der Symbole, Wolgang Bauer
Lexikon der Symbole | Wolgang Bauer & Irmgard Dümotz
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