Abstract

Based on an examination of Galileo’s mechanics, Peter Machamer and Andrea Woody (and Machamer alone in subsequent articles) proposed the scientific use of what they call models of intelligibility. As they define it, a model of intelligibility (MOI) is a concrete phenomenon that guides scientific understanding of problematic cases. This paper extends Machamer and Woody’s analysis by elaborating the semantic function of MOIs. MOIs are physical embodiments of theoretical representations. Therefore, they eliminate the interpretive distance between theory and phenomena, creating classes of concrete referents for theoretical concepts. Meanwhile, MOIs also provide evidence for historical analyses of concepts, like ‘body’ or ‘motion’, that are otherwise thought to be too basic for explicit explication. These points are illustrated by two examples also drawn from Galileo. First, I show how the introduction of the balance as an MOI leads Galileo to reject the Aristotelian conception of elemental natures. Second, Galileo’s rejection of medieval MOIs of circular motion constrains the reference of ‘conserved motion’ to curvilinear translations, thereby excluding the rotations that had been included in its scope. Both uses of MOIs marked important steps toward modern classical mechanics.