Caverni, Raffaello
,
Storia del metodo sperimentale in Italia
,
1891-1900
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scarcely brilliant from an epistemological point of view, blamed Raffaello
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Caverni as the sole individual responsible for certain reservations and limita
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tions formulated at the beginning of the century, especially abroad, concerning
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the validity and originality of Galileo's work. </
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<
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that one of the major causes of this truly anti-Galilean reaction lay, instead,
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principally in their panegyrics and hagiographical essays. </
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<
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Caverni's writings today lies exactly in his having sensed that while in the past
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crediting Galileo indiscriminately with everything worthwhile accomplished in
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Italy from the end of the sixteenth century to the second half of the seventeenth
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may have increased esteem for and diffusion of his works and thought, with
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modern historians it could seriously compromise, as indeed has happened, his
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authentic merits, in spite of their greatness. </
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<
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">It has been said and repeated by
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his critics that Caverni has drastically stripped the laurels wreathing the fore
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head of the great Tuscan scientist. </
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tried, instead, without false piety, to free the votive monument, erected to the
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man with the best of intentions, of all its tinsel and gingerbread, that it might
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better show its gold and gems. </
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<
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">It must surely be opportune, therefore, to exhume this work. </
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<
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question, instead, the photographic reproduction of the original edition, with
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its numerous typographical errors and incomplete indexes, without notes for
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clarification or cross-reference, without the verification and completion of the
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bibliographical references and, above all, without the necessary indication of the
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inevitable mistakes the author made in his exegesis of the sources, in which
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task he was a real pioneer. </
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<
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">In addition, perhaps it would have been possible to
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bring to light that part of the manuscript still, unfortunately, unprinted. </
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However, a new edition that would satisfy such a vast and ambitious program
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implies no small amount of labor, which besides requiring a considerable amount
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of time would be hampered by the lack of a congruous number of copies of the
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text. </
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">The six volumes of this work have become a rarity: few libraries possess
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any of them; very few have all of them—not even the Nazionale of Florencel
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Let us consider this present undertaking then as the first step toward a new,
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more dispassionate study of the work and toward a broader diffusion of it, so
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that we may have, in the near future, that new, corrected edition which per
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haps Caverni himself, who died at the peak of maturity, had hoped to prepare. </
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And we need not exclude in that event a more complete rendering of the sixth
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volume left truncated at the end of an even numbered page, right in the middle
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of a sentence. </
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2. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
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<
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<
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series of articles for and against the
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Storia del metodo sperimentale
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in one of the </
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