Reasoning, rhetoric and dialogue in Galileo's Mathematical Discourses

This study analyses the two English versions of Galileo Galilei’s Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno a due nuove scienze (1638, henceforth Discorsi), issued in England in 1665 and in 1730 respectively. The first is a translation by Thomas Salusbury, Esq.; the second is by Thomas Weston, Master of the Academy of Greenwich. The topic, as reported in the title pages of both versions, is Two New Sciences concerning Mechanicks and Local Motion (1665/1730). The new ideas and approaches to reality expressed in this work were «more favourably received […] by Englishmen than by men of any other nation outside Italy» (Drake 1999b: 236-237). It is no accident that, following the establishment of the Royal Society (1662), «many of Galileo’s books were published […] through the monumental labors of the mysterious Thomas Salusbury» (Drake 1999b: 247). Nor is it a coincidence that the two English translations preceded by far any other modern language version in Europe.