McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jun 12, 2017
This paper discusses the changing epistemological status of appearances in Renaissance mathematic... more This paper discusses the changing epistemological status of appearances in Renaissance mathematics from Alberti's Della pittura through the debate between Regiomontanus and Cusanus on the latter method of squaring the circle to Copernicus' Commentariolus and De Revolutionibus. Published in F. Jamil Ragep and Rivka Feldhay, Before Copernicus The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century (2017) pp. 110-141
<jats:p>Traditionally, the early modern period is characterized by a process whereby religi... more <jats:p>Traditionally, the early modern period is characterized by a process whereby religion, politics, and science are gradually separated into independent cultural spheres. This account conceives of the process of modernity in terms of 'total conflicts' between abstract institutions ('the state', the 'Church', 'science'), stemming from the demand for freedom of each of these institutions to determine their own norms of behaviour and thought within their own boundaries. The account I offer, in contrast, emphasizes the centrality of the rise of 'sovereign' states enhancing the creation of specific networks of interdependencies between rulers, the carriers of religion, and professional artists and scientists. However, interdependence also entailed 'conflict zones', where boundary work between political, religious, and scientific discourses was carried out.</jats:p>
The Nature of Pre-Classical Mechanics Jurgen Renn, Matthias Schemmel, Matteo Valleriani 2. Instit... more The Nature of Pre-Classical Mechanics Jurgen Renn, Matthias Schemmel, Matteo Valleriani 2. Institutions, Discourses, Correspondence Networks in the Era of Pre-Classical Mechanics Rivka Feldhay and Michael Elazar Case Studies 1. New Science in Galileo's New Science of Motion Jochen Buttner 2. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Cosmology and the Centrobaric Theory from Antiquity to the Renaissance ElioNenci 3. A Treatise on Galileian Mechanics: The Exercitationes in Mechanicis Aristotelis (1634) by the Jesuits Giovan Battista Zupi Romano Gatto 4. Heaviness and Lightness in the 17th Century: A Jesuit Perspective Rivka Feldhay and Ayeletibn Ezra 5. Jesuit Post-Galilean Conceptions of Impetus: Honore Fabri, Paolo Casati, and Francesco Eschinardi Rivka Feldhay and Michael Elazar
The fourteenth-century concept of impetus denotes an impressed force and was used to explain the ... more The fourteenth-century concept of impetus denotes an impressed force and was used to explain the continuation of the motion of projectiles and the acceleration of falling bodies. This chapter deals with the use of this concept in the period between Galileo’s death (1642) and the publication of Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687). Focusing on three major figures among contemporary Jesuit thinkers, the French Honore Fabri (1608–1688) and the Italians Paolo Casati (1617–1707) and Francesco Eschinardi (1623–1703), this chapter shows how these Jesuits employed the concept of impetus in their own versions of preclassical mechanics.
This paper examines the mechanical project of a Jesuit scientist-engineer Paolo Casati (1617–1707... more This paper examines the mechanical project of a Jesuit scientist-engineer Paolo Casati (1617–1707), as presented in his Mechanicorum libri octo (1684). The core of the project consists in an attempt to physicalize the mathematical science of machines while using Archimedes’s lever principle and his theory of buoyancy. Casati, however, aimed at enriching this science with principles originating in the Aristotelian science of motion. The fusion of Archimedean and Aristotelian elements—including the concept of impetus as the sole cause of motion—allowed him to deal with the motion of machines in terms of a hydrostatic theory of motion, neutralizing the Aristotelian notion of “positive lightness,” but without erasing it. This he did while engaging himself with experiments on “positive lightness” done at the Academia del Cimento (1657–1667). While this analysis throws light on the transformation of Aristotelian science in Jesuit schools of the seventeenth century, it also frees some Jesuits, at least, from a far too simplistic historiographical category of Galileo’s “nemici” (foes) and inserts them instead into the field of debates relevant for understanding the emergence of “the new science.”
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jun 12, 2017
This paper discusses the changing epistemological status of appearances in Renaissance mathematic... more This paper discusses the changing epistemological status of appearances in Renaissance mathematics from Alberti&#39;s Della pittura through the debate between Regiomontanus and Cusanus on the latter method of squaring the circle to Copernicus&#39; Commentariolus and De Revolutionibus. Published in F. Jamil Ragep and Rivka Feldhay, Before Copernicus The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century (2017) pp. 110-141
<jats:p>Traditionally, the early modern period is characterized by a process whereby religi... more <jats:p>Traditionally, the early modern period is characterized by a process whereby religion, politics, and science are gradually separated into independent cultural spheres. This account conceives of the process of modernity in terms of 'total conflicts' between abstract institutions ('the state', the 'Church', 'science'), stemming from the demand for freedom of each of these institutions to determine their own norms of behaviour and thought within their own boundaries. The account I offer, in contrast, emphasizes the centrality of the rise of 'sovereign' states enhancing the creation of specific networks of interdependencies between rulers, the carriers of religion, and professional artists and scientists. However, interdependence also entailed 'conflict zones', where boundary work between political, religious, and scientific discourses was carried out.</jats:p>
The Nature of Pre-Classical Mechanics Jurgen Renn, Matthias Schemmel, Matteo Valleriani 2. Instit... more The Nature of Pre-Classical Mechanics Jurgen Renn, Matthias Schemmel, Matteo Valleriani 2. Institutions, Discourses, Correspondence Networks in the Era of Pre-Classical Mechanics Rivka Feldhay and Michael Elazar Case Studies 1. New Science in Galileo's New Science of Motion Jochen Buttner 2. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Cosmology and the Centrobaric Theory from Antiquity to the Renaissance ElioNenci 3. A Treatise on Galileian Mechanics: The Exercitationes in Mechanicis Aristotelis (1634) by the Jesuits Giovan Battista Zupi Romano Gatto 4. Heaviness and Lightness in the 17th Century: A Jesuit Perspective Rivka Feldhay and Ayeletibn Ezra 5. Jesuit Post-Galilean Conceptions of Impetus: Honore Fabri, Paolo Casati, and Francesco Eschinardi Rivka Feldhay and Michael Elazar
The fourteenth-century concept of impetus denotes an impressed force and was used to explain the ... more The fourteenth-century concept of impetus denotes an impressed force and was used to explain the continuation of the motion of projectiles and the acceleration of falling bodies. This chapter deals with the use of this concept in the period between Galileo’s death (1642) and the publication of Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687). Focusing on three major figures among contemporary Jesuit thinkers, the French Honore Fabri (1608–1688) and the Italians Paolo Casati (1617–1707) and Francesco Eschinardi (1623–1703), this chapter shows how these Jesuits employed the concept of impetus in their own versions of preclassical mechanics.
This paper examines the mechanical project of a Jesuit scientist-engineer Paolo Casati (1617–1707... more This paper examines the mechanical project of a Jesuit scientist-engineer Paolo Casati (1617–1707), as presented in his Mechanicorum libri octo (1684). The core of the project consists in an attempt to physicalize the mathematical science of machines while using Archimedes’s lever principle and his theory of buoyancy. Casati, however, aimed at enriching this science with principles originating in the Aristotelian science of motion. The fusion of Archimedean and Aristotelian elements—including the concept of impetus as the sole cause of motion—allowed him to deal with the motion of machines in terms of a hydrostatic theory of motion, neutralizing the Aristotelian notion of “positive lightness,” but without erasing it. This he did while engaging himself with experiments on “positive lightness” done at the Academia del Cimento (1657–1667). While this analysis throws light on the transformation of Aristotelian science in Jesuit schools of the seventeenth century, it also frees some Jesuits, at least, from a far too simplistic historiographical category of Galileo’s “nemici” (foes) and inserts them instead into the field of debates relevant for understanding the emergence of “the new science.”
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