Galileo Galilei’s Notes on Motion

Abstract

Galileo Galilei’s Notes on Motion is a diplomatic digital edition most recently updated in 1999 that results from a joint collaboration between the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, both in Florence, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. It provides the digital edition of Galilei’s Codex Ms. Gal. 72, displaying folios 33 to 196, along with relevant propositions from Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (1638) related to the manuscript. The aim of this review is to evaluate the presentation and the contents of the edition, along with its effectiveness related to the academic purpose. In this essay, different assessment measures will be taken into account, all relating to the date in which the edition was published, along with the possible implementations that were not addressed at the time to provide a long-lasting scholarly work on the manuscript. As a result, the review considers the edition groundbreaking both for the functionalities and contents available at the time it was published, but the interface seems too outdated to be used in the modern digital world.

Keywords

• manuscript
• galileo galilei
• scholarly digital edition
• early editions
• early modern