The best translation of this classic. ( )

The classic work in which Galileo lays out his vision of the solar system, presenting evidence in support of the Copernican system, the views we now accept. For his troubles, Galileo was hauled before the Inquisition and placed on house arrest for the remainder of his life. The prose becomes a little dense at times, but with a bit of scientific knowledge, it's possible to grasp the basic concepts. ( )

One of the foundational works of modern science, the text speaks for itself in its lucidity and its grounding in method. I review it to address a criticism leveled at this book by reviewers, particularly at Amazon.

Some have concluded that the publisher has made an error, and that the original intent was to present Galileo's original paper on heliocentrism and Copernicus, "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican". As the texts herein are Galileo's works on accelerated motion, the conclusion is drawn that a major mistake was made.

I believe this perception is based on marketing that associates the series with Copernicus' discoveries in particular.

The fact is that this book is part of a series, the arc of which is to present the current model of the physical world from Copernicus' discovery of the heliocentric solar system to Einstein's revelation that space and time are warped or displaced by mass and energy. Reviewers mistakenly believed that this Galilean text was intended to stand in support of Copernicus' discovery. In fact, this text is meant to show the development of the laws of motion, and is merely part of the overall series. Hawking's introduction recognizes this correctly, in contradiction to the misunderstanding of Amazon reviewers.

Those interested in the origins of modern science, the history of science, physics, or intellectual history may well wish to read through this gem.

This is the single best book on physics I have ever read. Its clarity of thought and breadth of subject are unmatched. If you have ever wanted to know why some materials float in water while others sink, why objects fall at a speed independent of their mass but why feathers fall slower than stones, or
how to convince a guy you met in a bar that air does have weight (and how to measure it), read this book. ( )

A review of all of the learning of his youth, he writes this as a dialogue between three scientific explorers playing the role of teacher, experimenter, and student. He covers a lot of content in relatively few pages. More than anything else here, we see the process of the curious mind discovering physical truth incrementally through experimentation. Consider the humorous example of he and his friend convincing themselves that light probably is instantaneous as a result of their distant lantern echo from but a mile away. Nonetheless, there is truth here about acceleration (at least a third of the work dedicated to the path and time of the parabola of motion, geometry of mean proportionals to calculate time and distance), mechanics (especially discovering different tensile and hanging strengths, also about pressure of rope and friction), and geometry (the area of a circle relative to an infinitely-sided regular polygon; infinites and finites). ( )