The Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science Book 239)

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. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-9 What Was “Mechanical” about “The Mechanical Philosophy”?....Pages 11-23 Cartesian Mechanics....Pages 25-66 The “Rational” Descartes and the “Empirical” Galileo....Pages 67-82 A Historical-Analytical Framework for the Controversies over Galileo’s Conception of Motion....Pages 83-97 Galileo’s Unpublished Treatises....Pages 99-117 A Master and His pupils: Theories of Motion in the Galilean School....Pages 119-135 Galileo’s Theories of Free Fall and Projectile Motion as Interpreted by Pierre Gassendi....Pages 137-164 Hobbes and the Galilean Law of Free Fall....Pages 165-184 Christiaan Huygens’ Galilean Mechanics....Pages 185-198 Seventeenth-Century Theories of the Tides as a Gauge of Scientific Change....Pages 199-242 Mathematization of the Science of Motion at the Turn of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Pierre Varignon....Pages 243-259 Back Matter....Pages 261-287 "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."--Jacket.