Thinking With Objects

by Meli, Domenico Bertoloni

• ISBN13: 9780801884269
• ISBN10: 0801884268
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-31
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Thinking with Objects offers a fresh view of the transformation that took place in mechanics during the 17th century. By giving center stage to objects -- levers, inclined planes, beams, pendulums, springs, and falling and projected bodies -- Domenico Bertoloni Meli provides a unique and comprehensive portrayal of mechanics as practitioners understood it at the time. Bertoloni Meli reexamines such major texts as Galileo's Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, and Newton's Principia, and in them finds a reliance on objects that has escaped proper understanding. From Pappus of Alexandria to Guidobaldo dal Monte, Bertoloni Meli sees significant developments in the history of mechanical experimentation, all of them crucial for understanding Galileo. Bertoloni Meli uses similarities and tensions between dal Monte and Galileo as a springboard for exploring the revolutionary nature of seventeenth-century mechanics. Examining objects helps us appreciate the shift from the study to the practice of mechanics and challenges artificial dichotomies among practical and conceptual pursuits, mathematics, and experiment.

Author Biography

Domenico Bertoloni Meli is a professor of history and philosophy of science at Indiana University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(1)
Beyond Inertia: From Laws to Objects	1	(5)
Motion and Mechanics	6	(3)
The Role of Mathematics	9	(1)
Experience and Experiment	10	(2)
Practitioners, Sites, and Forms of Communication	12	(3)
Structure and Organization of the Present Work	15	(3)
Machines in the Field, in the Book, and in the Study	18	(22)
Between Classical Theory and Engineering Practice	18	(3)
Machines, Equilibrium, and Motion	21	(5)
The Balance of dal Monte and the Problem of Rigor	26	(6)
Pulleys and the Contingency of Matter	32	(3)
Rival Traditions on the Inclined Plane	35	(5)
Floating Bodies and a Mathematical Science of Motion	40	(26)
Some Features of Archimedes' Floating Bodies	40	(2)
Reading Floating Bodies	42	(3)
Benedetti against the Philosophers	45	(5)
Galileo's Early Speculations	50	(11)
Mazzoni, Stevin, and Galileo	61	(5)
The Formulation of New Mathematical Sciences	66	(39)
The Broadening of the Mechanical Tradition	66	(2)
Galileo at Padua and the Science of Motion	68	(12)
From Buoyancy to the Science of Waters	80	(6)
Motion between Heaven and Earth	86	(5)
The Science of the Resistance of Materials	91	(5)
The Science of Motion	96	(9)
Novel Reflections and Quantitative Experiments	105	(30)
Different Readings of Galileo	105	(3)
Mersenne's Harmonie and the Dialogo	108	(9)
Rethinking Galileo's Axiomatic Structure	117	(3)
Continuity and the Law of Fall	120	(6)
Trials with Projectiles, Pierced Cisterns, and Beams	126	(5)
The Experiments and Tables of Riccioli	131	(4)
The Motion and Collision of Particles	135	(26)
The Rise of the Mechanical Philosophy	135	(3)
Mechanics and the Mechanical Philosophy	138	(2)
Beeckman, Galileo, and Descartes	140	(5)
Motion and Its Laws	145	(4)
From the Balance to Impact: Beeckman, Marci, and Descartes	149	(7)
The Workings of the Cartesian Universe	156	(5)
Intermezzo. Generational and Institutional Changes	161	(147)
The Equilibrium and Motion of Liquids	166	(24)
A Characterization of a Research Tradition	166	(2)
Studies around the Time of the Cimento Academy	168	(5)
Pressure and Equilibrium in Pascal and Boyle	173	(3)
Studying the Motion of Waters North of the Alps	176	(5)
Guglielmini and the Bologna Scene	181	(6)
Experiments Combining Pressure and Speed	187	(3)
Projected, Oscillating, and Orbiting Bodies	190	(34)
The Tools of Investigation	190	(1)
The Analyses of Orbital Motion by Fabri and Borelli	191	(6)
Falling Bodies on a Moving Earth	197	(5)
Projectiles and Air Resistance	202	(3)
Huygens's Pendulum	205	(13)
English Approaches to Orbital Motion	218	(6)
Colliding Bodies, Springs, and Beams	224	(31)
The Emergence of Elasticity	224	(1)
Boyle and Elasticity	225	(2)
The Transformation of the Impact Rules	227	(13)
Springs between Technology and Cosmology	240	(7)
Bending and Breaking Beams	247	(8)
A New World-System	255	(33)
Teamwork and Anti-Cartesianism	255	(2)
Halley, Wren, Hooke, and Newton	257	(4)
The Principia's Structure and Conceptual Framework	261	(6)
The Role of Experiments	267	(10)
The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy	277	(6)
A New World-System: Newton and Flamsteed	283	(5)
Causes, Conservation, and the New Mathematics	288	(20)
Mechanics at the Turn of the Century	288	(2)
The New Analysis	290	(5)
Conservation	295	(3)
Early Responses to Newton's Principia	298	(4)
The New Analysis and Newton's Principia	302	(6)
Conclusion. Mapping the Transformations of Mechanics	308	(9)
Notes	317	(38)
References	355	(24)
Index	379