A Glimpse at a Challenging Research Agenda: Galileo to Guidobaldo del Monte in 1602

In November 1602, Galileo wrote a letter to his friend and patron Guidobaldo del Monte in which he outlined his current work. This letter has received particular attention as it provides the first explicit evidence that Galileo had returned to the question of the fall of heavy bodies along inclined planes, which he had already addressed in the 1590s. As is demonstrated in the succeeding chapters, the considerations explicitly referred to in the letter were in fact part of a much broader research agenda Galileo was following at the time and which has left abundant traces in the Notes on Motion. This chapter rereads and provides a fresh exegesis of the letter against the backdrop of the interpretation of Galileo’s early work on the problems of naturally accelerated motion being advanced in this book.