On the method in Galileo Galilei’ mechanics (original) (raw)
Annals of Science, 66, 2, 2009
ABSTRACT The reception process of Aristotle's Mechanical Questions during the early modern period began with the publication of the corpus aristotelicum between 1495 and 1498. Between 1581 and 1627, two of the thirty-five arguments discussed in the text, namely Question XIV concerning the resistance to fracture and Question XVI concerning the deformation of objects such as timbers, became central to the work of the commentators. The commentaries of Bernardino Baldi (1581–1582), Giovanni de Benedetti (1585), Giuseppe Biancani (1615) and Giovanni di Guevara (1627) gradually approached the doctrine of proportions of the Renaissance architects, some aspects of which deal with the strength of materials according to the Vitruvian conception of scalar building. These aspects of the doctrine of proportions were integrated into the Aristotelian arguments so that a theory of linear proportionality concerned with the strength of materials could be formulated. This very first theory of strength of materials is the theory to which Galileo critically referred in his Discorsi where he published his own theory of strength of materials. Economic and military constraints are determined as the fundamental reasons for the commentators’ commitment to developing a theory of strength of materials that later linked Galileo`s work to the practical knowledge of the architects and machine-builders of his time.
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 2022
The manuscript UCLA 170/624 (ff. 75-76) contains Galileo's proof of the center of gravity of the frustum of a cone, which was ultimately published as Theoremata circa centrum gravitatis solidorum in Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (Leiden 1638). The UCLA copy opens the possibility of giving a fuller account of Theoremata dating and development, and it can shed light on the origins of this research by the young Galileo. A comparison of the UCLA manuscript with the other extant copies is carried out to propose a new dating for the composition of the Theoremata. This dating will then be reconsidered in light of the mathematical content. The paper ends with a complete description of the content of the UCLA manuscript and the edition of Galileo's text there contained.
The authorship of the Principle of Inertia Part I
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), 2022
According to some currents of modern historiography, Galilei's propensity for circular motion would have led him to consider this and not rectilinear motion as “natural motion”; therefore the principle of inertia could not be fully attributed to Galileo, which he would never have formulated. The question of the authorship of the principle of inertia certainly weighs on both nationalistic elements and returns of antigaleleism, while the question of its not explicit formulation as a principle is due to ignorance of the type of organization that Galileo intended to give to the exposition of his physics. The author, after having hinted at possible prodromes of the principle of inertia and having reported the adverse opinions of illustrious historians of science (A. Koyré, I. B. Cohen, P. M. Duhem, P. Rossi, G. Holton), through a careful analysis of the Galilean writings, conducted on the digital versions with the help of text analysis programs, firmly reaffirms Galileo's authorship of the principle of inertia and the consequent principle of classical relativity. Secondo alcune correnti della storiografia moderna, la propensione di Galilei per il moto circolare lo avrebbe portato a ritenere come “moto naturale” questo e non il moto rettilineo; quindi a Galileo non si potrebbe attribuire pienamente il Principio d’Inerzia, che non avrebbe nemmeno mai formulato.Sulla questione della paternità del Principio d’Inerzia gravano certamente sia elementi nazionalistici sia ritorni di antigaleleismo, mentre la questione di una sua non esplicita formulazione come principio è dovuta all’ignoranza del tipo di organizzazione che Galileo intendeva dare all’esposizione della sua fisica. L’autore, dopo aver accennato a possibili prodromi del Principio d’Inerzia e aver riportato le avverse opinioni di illustri storici della scienza (A. Koyré, I. B. Cohen, P. M. Duhem, P. Rossi, G. Holton), attraverso un’attenta analisi degli scritti galileiani, condotta sulle versioni digitali con l’aiuto di programmi di analisi del testo, riafferma con decisione la paternità di Galileo del Principio d’Inerzia e del conseguente Principio di Relatività Classica.
The American Historical Review, 2007
Domenico Bertoloni Meli's new book begins its account of mechanics in the late sixteenth century and culminates in the work of Isaac Newton. The author's previous studies of Newton's mathematics and mechanics are fittingly complemented here by an extensive and detailed treatment of the traditions, theoretical and practical, of which Newton was the inheritor. But Thinking with Objects attempts to do more than simply survey that ground ; as his title indicates, Bertoloni Meli also wishes to restructure our understanding of what seventeenth-century mechanics was really all about. While Alexandre Koyre ´famously stressed mechanics in this period as an intellectual enterprise rooted in Platonic assumptions about the relationship between mathematics and nature, Edward W. Strong's Procedures and Metaphysics (Berkeley, 1936) emphasized mathematical studies of nature as having been rooted in practical mathematical procedures more than in metaphysical considerations. Bertoloni Meli, although not engaging explicitly with Strong's book, seeks a via media. He stresses 'objects ' themselves, by which he generally means material objects such as pendulums, balances and fluids, but also, sometimes, geometrical and quasi-geometrical diagrams. While Bertoloni Meli's idea is not elaborately theorized in the book, one might say that, in his view, all such objects are, to paraphrase Clifford Geertz, ' good to think with '. Experience of manipulating objects, thinking about them for both practical and mathematical purposes -the latter perhaps involving the extension of exemplary problem solutions in a Kuhnian sense, for example -enabled the growth of a broad field of ' mechanics ' by the end of the seventeenth century that involved many more kinds of phenomena than had been the case in the late sixteenth. Thus the story begins, fittingly, with Benedetti, Guidobaldo dal Monte, Galileo and others in Italy, as well as Simon Stevin in the Low Countries, tentatively approaching questions of local motion, a province of Aristotelian physics, from a broadly Archimedean statical direction, augmented by approaches gleaned from the pseudo-Aristotelian Questions of Mechanics. The general storyline at the outset is hence one familiar from Stillman Drake and I. E. Drabkin's Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Madison, 1969), from Drake and Paul Lawrence Rose's study of the Questions of Mechanics in this period (in Studies in the Renaissance (1971), 18, 65-104), as well as from more recent work by scholars such as W. R. Laird. Bertoloni Meli wishes, however, to uncover more than the intellectual antecedents to Galilean mechanics. Guidobaldo's work is exemplary for Bertoloni Meli's argument. By showing how Guidobaldo insisted on vindicating his theoretical ideas in precision instruments that would exemplify them with exactitude, the book moves away from a Koyre ´an idealist picture of its subject matter to stress engagement with things themselves. 'Rather than considering a simple theory-practice dichotomy, it is more useful to adopt a three-way partition involving mathematical theory, the tools and instruments of everyday experience, and the precision instruments from the Urbino workshops aimed at minimizing or even abolishing the effects of the imperfections of matter ' (p. 34). This trichotomy does not carry through the book as a whole, however. Instead, a wide array of issues, all converging on and constituting a new science of 'mechanics ', which included
Physics in Perspective, 2017
Galileo’s early inquiries on motion and free fall in Pisa (1588-1592) can be regarded as a case study of multiple knowledge-transfer at the very basic roots of modern mechanics. The until 1890 unpublished treatise De motu is an original but unsuccessful attempt to go beyond Aristotelian physics by extending Archimedean hydrostatics to the dynamics of natural motion and reappraising the late-medieval impetus theory to account for violent motion and acceleration. I will discuss in particular why Galileo was forced to abandon his project before moving to Padua and how the manuscripts De motu provided him with a “research agenda” for further theoretical and experimental investigation.
Early Science and Medicine, 2000
The group of writings entitled De motu (or De motu antiquiora) constitutes Galileo's earliest writings on dynamics. These manuscripts are usually dated to the years 1589 to 1592, when Galileo taught mathematics at the University of Pisa. Among their characteristics, the application of dynamic principles of Archimedean hydrostatics to the problem of motion stands out, as does their anti-Aristotelian tone. This paper tries to embed these writings within the cultural context in which they were created by documenting their link (which is most evident in various polemically charged references) to the debate over the motion of the elements between Girolamo Borro and Francesco Buonamici, the two most celebrated Pisan Aristotelians of the late sixteenth century.
Chapter 15: Galileo's Falling Bodies
Doing Philosophy via Thought Experiments, 2022
This chapter focuses on Galileo's famous thought experiment concerning the nature of falling bodies and how it successfully overturned Aristotle's theory of proportionality, which stated that the speed of falling bodies is weight-dependent--heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. Galileo's thought experiment is described in some detail, explaining precisely how it exposed a serious contradiction in Aristotle's theory and resulted in the discovery of a scientific law, which demonstrated that all falling bodies are governed by 'universal acceleration'' and travel at the same speed irrespective of size, shape or weight. There is a brief discussion of 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' knowledge and the remarkable fact that Galileo discovered an important feature of the natural world by 'a priori' (non-empirical) means.