The author shows how Galileo Galilei formed a scientific, phenomeno-technical gaze that allowed the phenomenon of the Moon to emerge within the framework of science-guided phenomenology. Galilei was a representative of the pre-existing anti-Aristotelian paradigm of the similarity of the Moon and Earth, and used a telescope in his exploration of celestial bodies. The latter represents the basis of the central thesis of the paper, which states that Galileo’s gaze through the telescope is not a natural gaze, but is instead a scientific-epistemological gaze that is formed by the scientific process itself. This opened the door for the Moon to come into existence as a phenomenon of scientific, objective phenomenology. In this sense, Galileo saw “things never seen before”, which also provided an insight into “thoughts never thought before” (Koyré, 1988: 78).
The article begins with a brief illustration of the Moon as a specific phenomenon with “thousands of gazes”, and continues with the central theme of the paper – the scientific gaze at the moon. The author briefly outlines the Aristotelian and anti-Aristotelian paradigms to show how Galilei’s thought is rooted within the latter. The central part of the text aims to analyse the process in which an epistemological, theoretical-technical gaze is formed, providing insight into the theoretical-technical phenomenon of the Moon.
