Exploration and Experimentation on the Weight and Density of Substances in the
Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
Author(s): Cesare Pastorino
Source: Early Science and Medicine , 2020, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2020), pp. 297-301
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48629213
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Introduction Early Science and Medicine 25 (2020) 297-301 297
www.brill.com/esm
Exploration and Experimentation on the Weight
and Density of Substances in the Sixteenth and
Early Seventeenth Centuries: Introduction
Cesare Pastorino
Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
cesare.pastorino@gmail.com
The second half of the sixteenth century saw a renewed interest among Euro-
pean scholars in the quantitative investigations of the weight and density of
substances. Attempts to estimate the specific weights of particular substances
were not new. Early numerical determinations for common metals, or materi-
als like oil, wine and honey, were already available in the Renaissance from a
variety of sources, including classical texts and medieval technical manu-
scripts.1 Also, medieval Arabic scholars had developed extremely sophisticated
examinations of the specific gravities of many substances, which however
were entirely unknown to the Renaissance authors of the Latin west.2 It is fair
to say then that the time between the mid-sixteenth century and the first few
decades of the seventeenth century marked the origins of an extensive experi-
mental program – still not fully investigated in the literature as a whole – for
the study in Europe of the weights of substances. Apart from Thomas Harriot,
Francis Bacon and Johannes Kepler – the scholars considered in three of the
essays in this special issue – it is worth recalling other figures who also em-
barked on significant explorations during this time. Among others, the cases of
Niccolò Tartaglia, François de Foix de Candale, Jean Bodin, Juan Bautista
Villalpando, Galileo Galilei and Marino Ghetaldi stand out. All of these authors
1 For instance, the pseudo-Galenic treatise De ponderibis et mensuris provided the proportions
72:80:108 for the weights of oil, wine and honey, respectively. Johan van Heurne, in the Praxis
medicinae nova ratio (Leiden, 1590), attributed to Galen a different choice of proportion, that
is to say 9:10:15. Also, estimates of the specific gravities of common metals were present in the
medieval Carmen de ponderibus and Mappae clavicula; see Marshall Clagett, The Science of
Mechanics in the Middle Ages (Madison, WI, 1959), 85-96.
2 Especially Al-Bīrūnī (973?-1048) and Al-Khāzinī (fl. 1115-1131); see Heinrich Bauerreiß, Zur
Geschichte des spezifischen Gewichtes im Altertum und Mittelalter (Erlangen, 1914); Mohammed
Abattouy, “Khāzinī, Abū al-Fatḥ ʿAbd Raḥmān al-,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Science, and Technology in Islam. Oxford Islamic Studies Online, <www.oxfordislamicstudies.
com/article/opr/t445/e129>, accessed 22 June 2020.
Early
© Science Brill
Koninklijke and Medicine
NV, Leiden, 25 (2020)
2020 297-301
| doi:10.1163/15733823-00254P01
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298 Pastorino
– in different ways and often with very different motivations – conducted ex-
tensive measurements of the specific weights of a large number of substances
and objects, including coins and precious stones.3
In the title of this special issue, I refer to these investigations as “explora-
tions.” This is not a casual choice. As the following articles will show, these
early observations and experiments on the weights of substances produced a
considerable number of preliminary measurements and results, which were
not however obtained through a univocal, consolidated method, and which,
overall, did not fit into a conclusive and coherent picture. The investigations
documented in this issue are not accounts of crucial discoveries, or confirma-
tions of overarching theories, but explorations of what was perceived as a still
largely unknown experimental landscape (what Friedrich Steinle has fittingly
called ‘exploratory experimentation’).4 As mentioned, investigations and mea-
surements produced a substantial collection of data. In the time span under
consideration, the number of things and substances which had had their
weights investigated grew from the small assortment considered by classical
authors – like water, wine, oil and the metals – to a remarkable number and
variety. The most spectacular case of this sort of accumulation can be found in
the almost Rabelaisian list of measured substances in Francis Bacon’s Historia
densi et rari, which included the weighing of things as diverse as mutton flesh,
pearl powder, ox horns, Indian balsam, raw calves’ brains, sheep’s blood, red
sandalwood, jet, fresh onion and cow’s milk.5 Also, as Silvia Manzo’s article
shows, interpretations on the increase of the weight of metals in mines and
during calcination developed in a haphazard way, alternating between accep-
tance and rejection of traditional and new explanations, among several disci-
plines (medicine, mineralogy, chemistry).
For the natural philosophers here considered, the investigation of the
weights and densities of substances was always intended as a means to devel-
op knowledge about the properties of matter. “A philosopher could learn a lot
from the diligent observation of the weight of every substance, and oftentimes
more than an alchemist from fire,” stated Kepler at the beginning of his
3 See, for instance, Niccolò Tartaglia, Ragionamenti […] sopra la sua travagliata inventione
(Venice, 1551); Galileo Galilei, Tavola delle proporzioni delle gravità in specie de i metalli e delle
gioie pesate in aria ed in aqqua, in Antonio Favaro, ed., Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, vol. I
(Florence, 1890), 221-228. For the other authors cited here, see the specific references in the
articles by Stephen Clucas and Cesare Pastorino in this issue.
4 On ‘exploratory experiments,’ see Friedrich Steinle, Explorative Experimente: Ampère, Faraday
und die Ursprünge der Elektrodynamik (Stuttgart, 2005); Engl. trans., Exploratory Experiments.
Ampère, Faraday, and the Origins of Electrodynamics (Pittsburgh, PA, 2016).
5 Francis Bacon, The Instauratio magna: Last Writings, ed. Graham Rees (Oxford, 2000),
40-45.
Early Science and Medicine 25 (2020) 297-301
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Introduction 299
discussion of specific gravities.6 Francis Bacon would have agreed: “to know
the Densities and Rarities of bodies, and much more to get hold of and bring
about their Condensations and Rarefactions is something of the greatest impor-
tance for contemplation and practice.”7 To that end, as Dana Jalobeanu shows
in her article, he used all of the tools at his disposal in his philosophy of ex-
perimentation. But why, in the middle of the sixteenth century, did weight
emerge as such an important quantity for natural philosophers in their efforts
to study the hidden properties of things?
In part, this new interest in gravimetric measurements was due to a crisis of
the Aristotelian notions of absolute heaviness and levity, together with new
interpretations of the rarity and density of substances. If, for atomists, mea-
surements of the absolute weights and volumes of substances could easily rep-
resent the quantity of homogeneous matter in a body, the situation was much
more complex from a traditional Aristotelian point of view. This was because,
to use Andrew Pyle’s concise assessment, “Aristotelian matter can undergo (in-
trinsic) condensation and rarefaction”: the same quantity of matter can “fill
more or less space,” without “leaving pores or interstitial vacua.”8 The same is-
sue can be also rephrased asserting that, in a purely Aristotelian framework,
matter “was not taken to possess a fixed absolute volume.”9 Also, measure-
ments of the weight of substances could produce puzzles, because, for in-
stance, if “fire, for a peripatetic, is absolutely light, but nonetheless material,”
then “adding fire to a compound would increase its quantity of matter but de-
creases its weight.” If so, the “notion that weight could serve as a measure of
quantity of matter” did not make sense.10
Nevertheless, even in an Aristotelian framework, measurements of weight
could still give signs and indications, if not about the quantity of matter, at
least of the internal nature of substances. So, for instance, Vannoccio Biringuc-
cio, Gabriele Falloppio and Girolamo Mercuriale could still offer a quantitative
explanation of the increase of the weight of lead during calcination, using the
Aristotelian notion of an inherently light pneumatic matter.11 Moreover, as
William Newman has shown, even for Aristotelian alchemists in the Geberian
6 “… ein Philosophus auß fleissiger betrachtung deß Gewichts an einem jeden Zeug trefflich
viel / und offtermals mehr erlernen könde / dann ein Alchimist auß dem Fewr,” Johannes
Kepler, Außzug auß der Uralten Messekunst Archimedis (Linz, 1616), 110.
7 “Nam & Densitates & Raritates Corporum nosse, & multo magis Condensationes &
Rarefactiones procurare & efficere, maxime interest & Contemplativae & Practicae.”
Bacon, The Instauratio Magna, 39.
8 Andrew Pyle, Atomism and its Critics. From Democritus to Newton (Bristol, 1997), 298.
9 Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 (Oxford, 2011), 70.
10 Pyle, Atomism, 298.
11 See Silvia Manzo’s article in this special issue.
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300 Pastorino
tradition of the Summa perfectionis, specific weight could be used to substanti-
ate corpuscular theories about the nature and composition of metals.12
One possible way of interpreting the increasingly relevant role of weight in
the investigation of substances in the second half of the sixteenth century –
and one that has already been well-explored – is to consider it a feature of the
process by which “the authority of Archimedes” would displace Aristotle.13 In
fact, Archimedean ideas fitted well with this change of perspective – in par-
ticular, the hydrostatic principle of Archimedes could easily explain the appar-
ent weight of bodies in media of different specific gravity without recourse to
the Aristotelian concept of inherent levity. This would imply a notion of the
“true weight” of a body, in some way linked to its matter.14
Certainly, several investigators of the weight of substances based their ex-
periments on the hydrostatic principle of Archimedes, comparing weights in
air and water, as for instance in the case of Niccolò Tartaglia, Galileo Galilei,
Marino Ghetaldi, and Thomas Harriot. At the same time, however, others – like
François de Foix de Candale, Jean Bodin, Juan Bautista Villalpando, Francis
Bacon and Johannes Kepler – did not employ hydrostatic methods, but instead
measured the weight of equal volumes of different substances in air. More-
over, the study of the specific gravities of substances could happen well be-
yond the domain of natural philosophy proper. This was the case, for instance,
with Juan Bautista Villalpando, a Spanish Jesuit who published his results in
his In Ezechielem explanationes, a monumental work offering a reconstruc-
tion of the Temple of Solomon based on the interpretation of the vision of
the biblical prophet Ezechiel.15 Villalpando’s measurements, often remarked
upon in modern literature for their accuracy, were part of an antiquarian –
and not natural philosophical – research program, a crucial fact usually over-
looked by commentators. Also, the experimentation on metals by Jean Bodin
and François de Foix de Candale was related to monetary matters and issues
about counterfeiting.16
12 William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the
Scientific Revolution (Chicago, IL, 2006), ch. 1; William Newman and Lawrence M. Prin
cipe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire. Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry
(Chicago, IL, 2002), ch. 2.
13 Pyle, Atomism, 357.
14 Ibid., 354.
15 Jerónimo de Prado and Juan Bautista Villalpando, In Ezechielem explanationes et appa
ratus urbis, ac templi Hierosolymitani: Commentariis et imaginibus illustratus. Opus tribus
tomis distinctum. Vol. 3 (Rome, 1604).
16 See Cesare Pastorino, “Weighing Experience: Experimental Histories and Francis Bacon’s
Quantitative Program,” Early Science and Medicine, 16 (2011), 542-570, at 557-562.
Early Science and Medicine 25 (2020) 297-301
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Introduction 301
Several of these non-natural philosophical connections can be discerned in
the background of the research documented in the articles contained in this
special issue (or are fully addressed in the primary sources, as is the case with
Johannes Kepler). In any event, the notions of weight and density, together
with their characterization and practical use in natural philosophy and be-
yond, were a central concern of many authors in the sixteenth and early seven-
teenth century, and there is still much to be gained from a more concentrated
study of their findings.
Acknowledgements
The preparation of this special issue was supported by the German Research
Foundation (DFG) as part of my project The Weight of Things. Quantification of
Matter and the Exchange of Technical and Learned Knowledge in Early Modern
Europe (project number: 339935097). Early work for this issue was developed
in a working group entitled “The Interdisciplinary Reconfiguration of Dense
and Rare in Early Modern Europe.” Together with the authors featured in this
issue, Arianna Borrelli was a key participant in the group, and I would like to
thank her for her very valuable contributions to it.
Early Science and Medicine 25 (2020) 297-301
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