The Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in Seventeenth-Century Europe

ISBN-13: 9789048166589 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 288 str.

Carla Rita Palmerino;J.M.M.H. Thijssen

Opis

This book collects contributions by some of the leading scholars working on seventeenth-century mechanics and the mechanical philosophy. Together, the articles provide a broad and accurate picture of the fortune of Galileo's theory of motion in Europe and of the various physical, mathematical, and ontological arguments that were used in favour and against it. Were Galileo's contemporaries really aware of what Westfall has described as "the incompatibility between the demands of mathematical mechanics and the needs of mechanical philosophy"? To what extent did Galileo's silence concerning the cause of free fall impede the acceptance of his theory of motion? Which methods were used, before the invention of the infinitesimal calculus, to check the validity of Galileo's laws of free fall and of parabolic motion? And what sort of experiments were invoked in favour or against these laws? These and related questions are addressed in this volume.

Spis treści

Preface List of Contributors Carla Rita Palmerino: Introduction Alan Gabbey: What Was 'Mechanical' about 'The Mechanical Philosophy'? Sophie Roux: Cartesian Mechanics William R. Shea: The 'Rational' Descartes and the 'Empirical' Galileo H. Floris Cohen: A Historical-Analytical Framework for the Controversies over Galileo’s Conception of Motion Jochen Büttner, Peter Damerow, Jürgen Renn: Galileo’s Unpublished Treatises. A case study on the role of shared knowledge in the emergence and dissemination of an early modern 'new science' Enrico Giusti: A Master and his Pupils: Theories of Motion in the Galilean School Carla Rita Palmerino: Galileo’s Theories of Free Fall and Projectile Motion as Interpreted by Pierre Gassendi Cees Leijenhorst: Hobbes and the Galilean Law of Free Fall Christiane Vilain: Christiaan Huygens’ Galilean Mechanics Wallace Hooper: Seventeenth Century Theories of the Tides as a Gauge of Scientific Change Michel Blay: Mathematization of the Science of Motion at the Turn of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Pierre Varignon Bibliography Index