Galileo, Ficino and Renaissance Platonism

Abstract

The great astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei mentions Plato many times in his writings, but the most famous passages are undoubtedly those in his two major works, the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) and Two New Sciences (1638), where he makes Plato the inspiration of his own, Galilean, cosmogony. In the Dialogue, speaking through his interlocutor Salviati, he writes: We may therefore say that straight motion serves to transport materials for the construction of a work; but this, once constructed, is to rest immovable-or if movable, is to move only circularly. Unless we wish to say with Plato that these world bodies, after their creation and the establishment of the whole, were for a certain time set in straight motion by their Maker [Fattore]. Then later, reaching certain definite places, they were set in rotation one by one, passing from straight to circular motion, and have ever since been preserved and maintained in this. A sublime concept, and worthy indeed of Plato, which I remember having heard discussed by our friend, the Lincean Academician [i.e., Galileo himself].

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