This book gives an account of the origins of theoretical mechanics in antiquity, its limited reception in the Arabic and Latin Middle Ages, and its recovery and subsequent development in Italy to the time of Galileo. From late antiquity to the fifteenth century, the ancient science of mechanics—the theory of machines—was almost completely unknown in the Latin West. Then, from the mid-fifteenth century on, Italian humanists began to recover the ancient texts, and from them through the sixteenth century Italian mathematicians restored the ancient science of mechanics.

The Renaissance of Mechanics first examines the principal ancient works on mechanics—the Aristotelian Mechanical Problems, the mechanical geometry of Archimedes, and Hero’s Mechanics—and then describes their limited reception in the Arabic world and their even more limited transmission to the medieval Latin West. It then traces their recovery in the fifteenth century and their assimilation in the sixteenth century by Niccolò Tartaglia, Francesco Maurolico, and Guidobaldo dal Monte, culminating in Galileo’s rediscovery of Hero’s lost mechanical principles. The book ends with an examination of Galileo’s mechanics and its relation to his new science of motion, and suggests how modern mechanics would emerge from these ancient roots.

Detailed analyses of these works offer new insights and interpretations while remaining accessible to general historians. The Renaissance of Mechanics will be of especial interest to those working in the fields of Renaissance humanism and the history of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance science and mathematics.

Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One. Devices and Desires
Chapter Two. Archimedes Mechanicus
Chapter Three. The Alexandria Quartet
Chapter Four. The Medieval Science of Weights
Chapter Five. The Recovery of Ancient Mechanics
Chapter Six. Niccolò Tartaglia and the Science of Weights
Chapter Seven. Francesco Maurolico and Equal Moments
Chapter Eight. Guidobaldo dal Monte and Hero’s Machines
Chapter Nine. Galileo Galilei and Hero’s Lost Principles
Conclusion
Appendix Selections from Commandino’s Translation of Pappus
Bibliography
Index

Source: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-45505-6