Abstract

When Favaro compiled his magisterial 20-volume edition of Galileo’s works, he left aside a large quantity of manuscripts in Galileo’s hand, dating apparently from his youth. The Juvenilia, as Favaro called them, are written in Latin and deal with the standard topics covered in courses in natural philosophy and logic at that time. Two different dates of composition have been proposed: c. 1584, when the twenty-year-old Galileo was a student at the University of Pisa and c. 1590 when he was already a lecturer at that university. Were the treatises transcribed by him from the class notes of one or more of his teachers? Were they compiled by him while still a student as part of his class work? Or were they composed by him as his own "official" class notes when he began to teach? Scores of authors, classical and contemporary, are quoted in them. To what extent does this reflect research on Galileo’s own part? Do the treatises reflect any innovation of doctrine or method attributable to Galileo himself?