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GP: Fachverband Geschichte der Physik

GP 5: Session 4

GP 5.3: Talk

Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 17:15–17:45, HS 7

From Archimedean Hydrostatics to Post-Aristotelian Mechanics: Galileo's Early Manuscripts 'De motu antiquiora' (c. 1590) — •Salvia Stefano — University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

Galileo's early inquiries on motion and free fall, already when he was lecturer of mathematics in Pisa (1588-1592), can be regarded as pivotal case study of multiple knowledge-transfer at the very basic roots of modern mechanics. His until 1890 unpublished treatise De motu is a first, unsuccessful attempt to go beyond the framework of Aristotelian physics by extending the principles of Archimedean hydrostatics to the dynamics of "natural motion", as well as by reappraising the late-medieval impetus theory in terms of vis impressa to account for "violent motion" and acceleration of projected/falling bodies. I will discuss in detail potentialities, limitations, and difficulties which finally led Galileo to abandon his original project before moving to Padua, at the crossing point among until then separated fields of knowledge: between rediscovery of Hellenistic mathematics and physico-philosophical problems raised by Pseudo-Aristotle's 'Mechanica'; traditional scientia de ponderibus and new issues related to (hydro)statics, machine-building, civil and military architecture, navigation, ballistics, and the resistance of materials; tacit/shared knowledge of practitioners and theoretically driven experimentation led by a new, hybrid figure of "scientist-engineer" or "scholar-technician", to which the young Galileo definitely belonged.