Galileo and Contemporary Epistemology. Do we still have something to learn from Galileo’s ‘methodological revolution’?

In order to support his new science, Galileo Galilei criticized the Aristotelianism that permeated the science of his time, by endorsing Aristotle's traditional rival, Plato, read through the mediation of Archimedes, another scientist he valued highly. This allowed him to lay the foundations of modem science, breaking with the qualitative science of peripatetic medieval philosophy. To this purpose, he built a new methodology that is justified by a worldview based upon several ontological assumptions that outline· an influential metaphysics that are pivotal to science. It is uncertain whether Galileo gave these assumptions the character of a purely methodological and necessary move; anyway, subsequently they deeply marked scientific thought, and particularly influenced scientists and philosophers who were barely aware of the methodological approach of modem science. However, it would be a mistake to transform the assumptions, that are at the basis of Galileo's methodology, into a ,true" vision of nature, as this would end up being an obstacle to any scientists who want to follow different scientific paths. In this paper, I analyse how Galileo dealt with this issue, and for this purpose, I start with his critique of the ontology of Aristotle's followers.