Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution

This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or between textual traditions and the wider world of practice. Its purpose is to show how the accommodations sometimes made in the course of these conflicts ultimately contributed to the emergence of modern mechanics.

Résumé

Modern mechanics was forged in the seventeenth century from materials inherited from Antiquity and transformed in the period from the Middle Ages through to the sixteenth century. These materials were transmitted through a number of textual traditions and within several disciplines and practices, including ancient and medieval natural philosophy, statics, the theory and design of machines, and mathematics.

This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or between textual traditions and the wider world of practice. Its purpose is to show how the accommodations sometimes made in the course of these conflicts ultimately contributed to the emergence of modern mechanics.

The first part of the volume is concerned with ancient mechanics and its transformations in the Middle Ages; the second part with the reappropriation of ancient mechanics and especially with the reception of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanica in the Renaissance; and the third and final part, with early-modern mechanics in specific social, national, and institutional contexts.

Contenu

Ancient and Medieval Mechanics.- Theory and Practice in Heron'S Mechanics.- Bradwardine'S Rule: A Mathematical Law?.- The Origin and Fate of Thomas Bradwardine'S De Proportionibus Velocitatum in Motibus in Relation to the History of Mathematics.- Concepts of Impetus and the History of Mechanics.- The Reappropriation and Transformation of Ancient Mechanics.- Circular and Rectilinear Motion in the Mechanica and in the 16th Century.- Nature, Mechanics, and Voluntary Movement in Giuseppe Moletti'S Lectures on The Pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanica.- Mechanics and Natural Philosophy in Late 16th-Century Pisa: Cesalpino and Buonamici, Humanist Masters of The Faculty of Arts.- The Enigma of the Inclined Plane from Heron to Galileo.- Mechanics in New Contexts.- The Pendulum as A Challenging Object in Early-Modern Mechanics.- Mechanics in Spain at the End of the 16th Century and the Madrid Academy of Mathematics.- Mechanics and Mechanical Philosophy in some Jesuit Mathematical Textbooks of the Early 17th Century.