Galileo’s Discourse on Bodies in Water (1612) is science as duel: against the Aristotelians of the Florentine court, Galileo takes up Archimedes’ hydrostatics and demonstrates — by reason and beautiful table-top experiments — why things float, sink and hover, dispatching the doctrine of ‘form’ with lethal politeness.
Dedicated to his patron Cosimo II, it shows Galileo’s experimental method and polemical genius in one compact performance. Download the free EPUB and watch Aristotle sink.