The Impact of Practitioner’s Knowledge on Early Modern Mechanics

A series of research activities examines the role of practical knowledge in the development of theoretical mechanics during the early modern period. These activities deal with three questions:

• What are the relations between practical and theoretical knowledge?
• What is the structure of practical knowledge as far as it influences the development of theoretical knowledge?
• What are the socio-economic conditions of the development of practical knowledge?

The work of Galileo Galilei is particularly suited as a model case for addressing the first question. In order to understand the practical background of his theoretical achievements, his apprenticeship as an artist-engineer between 1584 and 1589 and the practical activities performed during his stay in Padua between 1592 and 1610 were analyzed. It was thus shown that his profile was comparable to that of a contemporary military engineer. Practical concerns had an immediate impact on Galileo’s theoretical achievements. During his stay in Padua, Venetian authorities led an official enquiry concerning practical issues such as the maneuverability of large galleys. As it turned out, it was in reaction to this enquiry that Galileo developed his theory for analyzing the resistance to fracture of materials, later published in the Discorsi in 1638. During his apprenticeship Galileo also became an expert in pneumatics. In particular he worked on an ancient pneumatic device, mentally re-configured into what is now called thermoscope and used for the first time to determine temperatures. The search for an explanation of the functioning of the thermoscope led Galileo to the formulation of the hypothesis of the discrete nature of heat, published in 1623 in Il Saggiatore. The starting point of such investigations by Galileo was constituted by a set of mental models rooted in Aristotelian natural philosophy, which were transformed in the course of confrontation with practical experiences (Matteo Valleriani). The results of this research are published in a book entitled Galileo Engineer, the second volume in the series The Historical Epistemology of Mechanics.

In order to address the question of the impact of practical on theoretical knowledge in the context of another, closely related field, the role of early modern hydraulic and pneumatic technology for the development of hydromechanics was examined (Matteo Valleriani). Within the framework of the collaboration with the Research Center— Transformations of Antiquity, it could be shown, in particular, that hydraulic engineers, who constructed the Garden of Pratolino near Florence—one of the greatest achievements of early modern technology—relied on ancient sources which they interpreted in the context of Renaissance technology. This research was based on a newly established virtual archive of relevant sources accessible on the ECHO website and via a virtual reconstruction of the garden. The wider historical background of hydromechanics was studied focusing on the analysis of texts related to clepsydra, water-clocks, the shaduf and Archimedes’ screw (Elio Nenci).

The relation between practitioners’ and scientific knowledge was furthermore examined by investigating the history of the design and construction of complex two- and three-dimensional shapes in architecture and ship geometry. Before 1800, the task of conceiving, documenting and fabricating such shapes constituted an important interface between practical and theoretical knowledge. A volume has been published that comprises comparative results in both naval and civil architecture from classical antiquity to the Renaissance (Wolfgang Lefèvre, Horst Nowacki).

Another study has shown that the theoretical reflection of mechanical practices are not necessarily confined to the realm of mechanics. This becomes particularly evident by the role that anatomy played in the interpretation of the stability of buildings (Antonio Becchi). Work on the role and structure of practical knowledge was supported by a database of machine drawings. Extending earlier work, these drawings have been systematically analyzed with regard to technical components and pictorial language in social context. They have been made available as part of the Archimedes digital research library, including rare manuscripts from the 15th and 16th centuries (Wolfgang Lefèvre, Marcus Popplow).

The influence of the socio-economic conditions on the development of practical knowledge is revealed by a case study that examines the life and works of the mathematician, architect and engineer Mutio Oddi of Urbino (1569 –1639), a contemporary of Galileo and pupil of Guidobaldo del Monte (Alexander Marr). This study has identified the growing overlap between mathematics, instrumental practice, bookish knowledge, and visual culture in the Late Renaissance through close examination of a voluminous archive of manuscript material, comprising some 1000 letters, notebooks, and unpublished treatises. The development of mechanics as the result of an interaction of practical knowledge with other forms of knowledge ranging from antiquity to the early modern period finds its parallels in the evolution of optics and music theory as fields of scientific knowledge similarly dependent on the accumulated experiences of practitioners.

Work on a critical edition and translation of Isaac Newton’s Opticks has continued (Volkmar Schüller). Further work has also been dedicated to the investigation of the process of arithmetization of the theory of proportions in early modern music and its consequences on the contemporary development of theoretical music (Oscar Abdounur). The analysis of the social contexts of science in the 17th century and the investigations on the origins of “externalism” in science studies has motivated a reconsideration of classical papers (Peter McLaughlin, Gideon Freudenthal). A collection of papers by Boris Hessen and Henryk Grossmann was published with an introduction explicating and analyzing the classical Marxist approach to an explanation of the Scientific Revolution developed in these writings. It was shown that Hessen and Grossmann, far from arguing that science was pursued in order to improve technology, focussed on the role of technology as the precondition and subject matter of theoretical knowledge.