
Thinking with Objects
The Transformation of Mechanics in the Seventeenth Century
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Thinking with Objects
The Transformation of Mechanics in the Seventeenth Century
About this book
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.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Machines in the Field, in the Book, and in the Study
- 2 Floating Bodies and a Mathematical Science of Motion
- 3 The Formulation of New Mathematical Sciences
- 4 Novel Reflections and Quantitative Experiments
- 5 The Motion and Collision of Particles
- Intermezzo. Generational and Institutional Changes
- 6 The Equilibrium and Motion of Liquids
- 7 Projected, Oscillating, and Orbiting Bodies
- 8 Colliding Bodies, Springs, and Beams
- 9 A New World-System
- 10 Causes, Conservation, and the New Mathematics
- Conclusion. Mapping the Transformations of Mechanics
- Notes
- References
- Index