Abstract
The thesis of existence of medieval “forerunners” to galilean works on the fall of bodies goes back to Pierre Duhem. Duhem notably aimed the texts about Configurations of qualities which is a geometrical version of the Latitude of Forms, i.e. the quantification of qualities.
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Notes
- 1.
Duhem (1913).
- 2.
- 3.
Oresme (1370).
- 4.
Ibid., Proemium, pp. 158–159.
- 5.
See Chap. 5.
- 6.
See infra n. 17.
- 7.
For instance Boyer (1959, pp. 82–84).
- 8.
“To be represented”, “to be imagined”, “to be designed”, “to be assimilated” are the translations of esse figuratum, ymaginari, designari, assimilari which are used as synonyms by Oresme.
- 9.
Oresme (1370, prima pars, cap. 1, pp. 164–167).
- 10.
Ibid (prima pars, cap. 4, pp. 172–175).
- 11.
This disposition is the fact for the quality to be uniform, or uniformly difform and so on.
- 12.
In Science of Mechanics, p. 363 Clagett (1959) gives this commentary about the figure representing the quantity of a quality: “the whole figure i.e. the summation of all the intension lines erected in all the points of the extension line”. This commentary has not any relation with the oresmian’s text, and, for me, it is purely anachronistic.
- 13.
Oresme (1370, pars II, cap. 1, pp. 270–273).
- 14.
Ibid (cap. 8, pp. 288–291).
- 15.
Oresme often uses the word velocitas as a synonym of motus.
- 16.
- 17.
Oresme (1370, pars III, cap. 7, pp. 408–413).
References
1370, Oresme, Nicole, De configurationibus qualitatum et motuum, edited, translated and commented by Marshall Clagett in Nicole Oresme and the Geometry of Qualities and Motions, Madison, Milwaukee and London, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.
Boyer, Carl Benjamin (1959), The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, New York, Dover Publications, 1959.
Clagett, Marshall (1959), The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1959.
Duhem, Pierre (1913), Etudes sur Léonard de Vinci. Troisième série. Les précurseurs parisiens de Galilée, Paris, Hermann et fils, 1913, reprint Montreux, Editions des archives contemporaines, 1984.
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Celeyrette, J. (2015). Indivisibles and Latitude of Forms. In: Jullien, V. (eds) Seventeenth-Century Indivisibles Revisited. Science Networks. Historical Studies, vol 49. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00131-9_19
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