How Things Break

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Abstract
Galileo Galilei was almost seventy years old, his life nearly shattered by a trial for heresy before the Inquisition, when he retired in 1633 to his villa near Florence to construct the Dialogues Concerning ‘Two New Sciences. His first science was the study of the forces that hold objects together and the conditions that cause them to fall apart—the dialogue taking place in a shipyard, triggered by observations of craftsmen building the Venetian fleet. His second science concerned local motions—laws governing the movement of projectiles.