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Galileo Engineer: Art and Modern Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Wolfgang Lefèvre
Wolfgang Lefèvre
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
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Abstract

In spite of Koyré's conclusions, there are sufficient reasons to claim that Galileo, and with him the beginnings of classical mechanics in early modern times, was closely related to practical mechanics. It is, however, not completely clear how, and to what extent, practitioners and engineers could have had a part in shaping the modern sciences. By comparing the beginnings of modern dynamics with the beginnings of statics in Antiquity, and in particular with Archimedes — whose rediscovery in the sixteenth century was of great consequence — I will focus on the question of which devices played a comparable role in dynamics to that of the lever and balance in statics. I will also examine where these devices came from. In this way, I will show that the entire world of mechanics of that time — “high” and “low,” practical and theoretical — was of significance for shaping classical mechanics and that a specific relationship between art and science was and is constitutive for modern sciences.

Type
1. The Context of the Practioners: Mechanics and its New Objects
Information
Science in Context , Volume 13 , Issue 3-4 , Autumn-Winter 2000 , pp. 281 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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