Galileo's legacy: a critical edition and translation of the manuscript of Vincenzo Viviani's Grati Animi Monumenta.
Having been found 'vehemently suspected of heresy' by the Holy Office in 1633, at the time of his death (1642) Galileo's remains were laid to rest in the tiny vestry of a lateral chapel of the Santa Croce Basilica, Florence. Throughout his life, Vincenzo Viviani, Galileo's last disciple, struggled to have his master's name rehabilitated and his banned works reprinted, as well as a proper funeral monument erected. He did not live to see all this come true, but his efforts triggered a mechanism that eventually led to the fulfilment of his wishes. A key element of his project was the transformation of the facade of his palace into a private (but publicly rendered) tribute to Galileo, with two long inscriptions celebrating Galileo's achievements and calling Florence's attention to the need to pay a proper tribute to him. Shortly afterwards, he revised the text and circulated it in print. This article presents the first critical edition and annotated translation of Viviani's original manuscript, long thought to be lost, and describes its role in Viviani's lifelong struggle for Galileo's intellectual legacy, as well as its impact on future historiography.
"Per desiderio del vero e delle sue cause": Galileo astronomo filosofo
This paper provides the framework for understanding Galileo’s request to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1610, to be appointed in Florence as both Mathematician and Philosopher. By explicitly choosing such a title, he wished to stress the fact that his own work aimed at contributing to the new physical astronomy with which Copernicus inaugurated what is now called the Scientific Revolution. As opposed to Ptolemy, who understood astronomy as a purely mathematical tool in order to “save the phenomena” and allow for accurate predictions, Galileo – very much in line with Copernicus and Kepler, as well as Newton after him – supported the reality of the Copernican system not only against Aristotle and Ptolemy, but also against Tycho Brahe. And, as it turned out after 1616, against the Church itself, which, in full accord with Osiander’s unsigned preface to the De revolutionibus, refused to see in the Copernican theory anything more than a mere working hypothesis to which astronomers were allowed to appeal only for computations.
Experimental study of thermal modeling for stratospheric platform airships
R&D work on the Japanese stratospheric platform airship is discussed from the viewpoint of the thermal modeling. The work includes two experiments on the thermal characteristics of the 25m-long airship and the 35m-long PV-equipped airship model. The validity of the current thermal model was confirmed by comparing the calculated results with the measured data. The other important work is the Ground-to-Stratosphere (GTS) flight test. A 47mlong airship-shaped balloon was flown to the stratosphere. The flight simulation program into which the thermal model was integrated, was developed and applied successfully to predict the ascent behavior and the flight trajectory.