The «greate Star-gazer Galileo» in mid-seventeenth-century England: the case of Robert Boyle

Over the past thirty years, our understanding of various aspects of Boyle’s intellectual biography has been signi!cantly enhanced. However, little or no attention has been paid to Boyle’s reading of Galileo’s works, and the in"uence exerted on him by Galileo’s myth and his outstanding achievements. The only signi!cant contribution came from Robert W. Maddison in a concise but still useful study published in 1967. Starting from Maddison’s study, in this paper I will try to assess the impact of Galileo on Boyle, focusing on Boyle’s view of Galileo’s telescopic discoveries, and his most important contribution to physics, his Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze. Scattered references in his published and unpublished works show that Boyle often relied on secondary sources, notably Gassendi’s Institutio Astronomica, Mersenne’s Cogitata physico-mathematica and his well-known French free translation of Discorsi, the Nouvelles pensées. He got Carlo Manolessi’s Opere di Galileo Galilei only in the late 1660s, and likely referred to Manolessi’s edition when he works on his physico-theological treatises published from the mid-1670s onwards. A closer scrutiny of these references shows that Boyle regarded Galileo’s Discorsi as one of the most notable examples of the fruitful association between mechanical disciplines and natural philosophy. Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius and Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari played a signi!cant role in Boyle’s attempt to ‘reconcile’ reason and religion.