Some remarks on Galileo and atomism

The question of atomism of Galileo is here reconsidered. A new understanding of his atomism sheds light on several problems. Its relationship with Copernican cosmolology and with Giordano Bruno; its relationship with the mathematizion of motion by the acknowledgement of the existence of infinitesimal atoms and of the vacuum; its relationship with a proto-thermodynamical approach to the constitution of matter and its irreducibility to a corpuscolarist mechanics and to a mechanist conception of Nature; its relationship with a cosmology of light and of magnetism. Atomism thus was rediscovered and mathematically refounded by Galileo in experimental practices and constitutes the new aposteriori philosophical background and the deep breaking with the previous natural philosophy.