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Giuseppe Moletti's “Dialogue on Mechanics” (1576)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

W. R. Laird
W. R. Laird*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Giuseppe Moletti (1531-1588) is now remembered only as one of the mathematicians to whom a young Galileo submitted some theorems on centers of gravity, and as Galileo's immediate predecessor in the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua. Yet in his day Moletti was well-known and highly regarded: he was, for instance, one of the mathematicians consulted by Pope Gregory on calendar reform, and his geographical and astronomical works went through several editions in his lifetime. Since his death, however, the only writing of Moletti's to be printed was a brief passage that caught the attention of Giambattista Venturi in the early nineteenth century. Venturi, searching for lost fragments of Galileo's works, came upon Moletti's otherwise unknown and unprinted “Dialogue on Mechanics” in a manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , Summer 1987 , pp. 209 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1987

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Footnotes

*

The research for this paper was done while a Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow at Rice University, Houston. An earlier version was read at the Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society in Bloomington, Indiana, 31 October-3 November 1985.

References

1 Milan, BibliotecaAmbrosiana, MS. A 71 inf., fol. 96; and in Le opere di Galileo Galilei, ed. Antonio Favaro (Edizione Nazionale) 23 vols. (Florence, 1891-1909; several reprints), I, 183.

2 Venturi, Giambatista, Memorie e lettere inedita finora o disperse di Galileo Galilei (Modena, 1818), p. 8 Google Scholar; see Favaro, , “Amici e corrispondenti di Galileo Galilei: XL. Giuseppe Moletti,” Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 77 (1917-18), 45–118, on pp. 88-90Google Scholar; rpt. in Amici e corrispondenti di Galileo, 3 vols., ed. Paolo Galluzzi (Florence, 1983), III, 1583-1656, on pp. 1626-28 (henceforth I shall cite only the original page numbers, as they are preserved in the reprint).

3 Caverni, , Storia del metodo sperimentale in Italia, IV (Florence, 1895), 271-74.Google Scholar

4 Favaro, “Giuseppe Moletti,” p. 89.

5 Settle, Thomas B., “Galileo and Early Experimentation,” in Springs of Scientific Creativity: Essays on Founders of Modern Science, ed. Aris, Rutherford, Davis, H. Ted, and Stuewer, Roger H. (Minneapolis, 1983), pp. 3–20, on pp. 10-12.Google Scholar

6 The fullest treatment of Moletti is Favaro, “Giuseppe Moletti,” cited above; see also Favaro, , “Giuseppe Moletti,” in Mieli, A., ed. Gli scienziati italiani, Vol. I, Part I (Rome, 1921), 36–39 Google Scholar; Favaro, , “I lettori di matematica nella Università di Padova,” Memorie e documents per la storia dell’ Università di Padova, I (1922), 3-70, on pp. 67–70 Google Scholar; Favaro, , Galileo Galilei e lo Studio di Padova (Padua, 1966), pp. 104–105 Google Scholar; Rose, Paul Lawrence, “Professors of Mathematics at Padua University 1521-1588,” Physis, 17 (1975), 300–304, on p. 303Google Scholar; and Rose, , The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics (Geneva, 1975), pp. 286-87Google Scholar et passim. The main source for Moletti's biography is the funeral oration by Riccoboni, Antonio, Orationum volumen secundum (Padua, 1591), fols. 41v-46v.Google Scholar It has been suggested that he studied mathematics under Francesco Maurolico of Messina ( Rose, , Italian Renaissance of Mathematics, p. 286 Google Scholar; Carugo, Adriano, “Giuseppe Moleto: Mathematics and the Aristotelian Theory of Science at Padua in the Second Half of the 16th Century,” in Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, ed. Olivieri, Luigi [Padua, 1983], I, 509-17, on p. 515Google Scholar), but there is no evidence to support this; Moletti never mentions Maurolico or his works in any of his writings that I have examined.

7 Riccoboni, Orationum volumen secundum, fols. 43v-44.

8 Giuseppe Moletti, Discorso…nel quale si dichiarano tutti i termini et le regole appartenenti alla Geografia, printed with Ptolemy, , La Geografia, trans. Ruscelli, Girolamo (Venice, 1561)Google Scholar; ed. Gio.Malombra (Venice, 1564); and printed separately (Venice, 1564 and 1573); L'Efemeridi per anni XVIII… 1563-1580 (Venice, 1563), reissued in 1564 for the years 1564-1584 (Venice, 1564). On these works see Favaro, , “Giuseppe Moletti,” in Amici e corrispondenti, III, 51, 54-55.Google Scholar

9 Giuseppe Moletti, Tabulae Gregorianae and De corrigendo calendario[printed together] (Venice, 1580); see Favaro, “Giuseppe Moletti,” pp. 68-84.

10 Favaro, “Giuseppe Moletti,” p. 63; see Milan, Bibl. Ambr., MS. S 100 sup.

11 Laird, W. R., “The Scope of Renaissance Mechanics,” Osiris, Ser. 2, 2 (1986), 43–68, on pp. 60-62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 On Pinelli'slibrary see Grendler, Marcella, “A Greek Collection in Padua: The Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535-1601),” Renaissance Quarterly, 33 (1980), 386–416, esp. 388-90, 402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Milan, Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup., fols. 294-318; I am currently preparing an edition and English translation of the “Dialogue.”

14 Milan, Bibl. Ambr., MS. D 235 inf., fols. 59-62v.

15 Caverni, , Storia, p. 271 Google Scholar; Favaro, “Giuseppe Moletti,” p. 89.

16 AN makes reference to a certain “Franceschino che suona l'organo di santa Barbara” (Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup., fol. 317), where Santa Barbara is the Ducal church in Mantua and Franceschino is almost certainly Francesco di Rovigo, who was organist there in the 1570s ( Tagmann, Pierre M. and Fink, Michael, “Rovigo, Francesco [Franceschino],” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians [London, 1980], Vol. 16, 279-80Google Scholar; Fenlon, Iain, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua [Cambridge, 1980], p. 108 Google Scholar [thanks to Jeffrey G. Kurtzman for these references]); in the opening paragraph AN refers to seeing machines and instruments in PR's “place” (“Queste tante machine et questi tanti stromenti ch'io veggo in questo luogo di V. A.… ” fol. 295). But instead of meaning “Principe,” PR might simply stand for “Precettore” (tutor).

17 PR describes AN as a “cavaliero soldato” in contrast to philosophers and “persone suoperate” who desire not to know but merely to quibble (Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup., fol. 313 v); I do not know whether the phrase signifies a specific military or social rank.

18 Ibid., fol. 295.

19 Ibid., fols. 295v-310v.

20 Ibid., fols. 301v-305v; cf. Pseudo-Aristotle, Mechanical Problems 847b16-849b19, ed. W. S. Hett, in Aristotle, Minor Works (Loeb Classical Library; London and Cambridge, Mass., 1936); see Copernicus, Derevolutionibus, III. 4, ed. Franz Zeller and Karl Zeller (Munich, 1949), pp. 150-51.

21 Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup., fols. 305v-308v; see Jordanus, De ratione ponderum, ed. E. A. Moody and Marshall Clagett, in The Medieval Science of Weights (Madison, 1952), pp. 175-227; Niccolò Tartaglia, Quesiti et invenzione diverse (Venice, 1546; 1544; rpt. in facsimile, Brescia, 1959), Book VIII, qu. 24, trans, in Stillman Drake and Drabkin, I. E., The Science of Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Madison, 1968), pp. 118-19.Google Scholar

22 Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup., fol. 305V.

23 “… quanto più un peso obligato a moversi in giro, o una forza s'allontana dal centro, con tanto maggior velocità si moverà, e la forza tanto maggior effetto farà” (ibid., fol. 308V).

24 Ibid., fols. 308v-309v.

25 Ibid., fol. 309v. Cf. “Cur virga longius mittatur a puero quam a viro investigare” ( Cardano, Girolamo, Opus novum de proportionibus, Book V, prop. 113 [Basel, 1570]Google Scholar, and in Opera [London, 1663; rpt. in facsimile New York, 1967], IV, 517); Cardano gives the reason, among others, that light things cannot receive as great an impetus as heavy things. Galileo would later make much the same point in an undated fragment on mechanics (Opere, VIII, 572-73; trans, in Drabkin, I. E. and Drake, Stillman, Galileo on Motion and Mechanics [Madison, 1960], p. 140).Google Scholar

26 Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup.,fols. 310-12.

27 See Pseudo-Aristotle, Mechanical Problems, 858a23-b3 (ed. and trans. Hett, pp. 406-409).

28 Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup., fols.312-14v.

29 Ibid., fols. 314v-18; for a translation and discussion of part of this passage see Settle, “Galileo and Early Experimentation,” pp. 10-12.

30 Bibl. Ambr.S 100 sup., fols. 314v-16v.

31 Ibid., fols. 316r-v; cf. Cardano, Opus novum de proportionibus. Book V, prop, 110 (London, 1663; rpt. 1967), IV, 515-16; Cardano's proposition is reprinted and translated in Cooper, Lane, Aristotle, Galileo, and the Tower of Pisa (Ithaca, 1935), pp. 74–77.Google Scholar

32 Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup., fols. 316v-18; I have not yet found where Cardano gives this explanation.

33 See Rose, Paul Lawrence and Drake, Stillman, “The Pseudo-Aristotelian Questions of Mechanics in Renaissance Culture,” Studies in the Renaissance, 18 (1971), 65–104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Laird, “The Scope of Renaissance Mechanics,” passim.

34 Moletti was fond of repeating the accounts of Archimedes’ life—and death— found in Plutarch's “Life of Marcellus” xiv.3-xix.6, in Plutarch's Lives, ed. & trans. Bernadotte Perrin, 11 vols. (Loeb Classical Library; London and New York, 1917), V, 468-87 (see Moletti, “Dialogue on Mechanics,” Bibl. Ambr. S 100 sup., fol. 298, and “Lectures on the Mechanical Problems,” ibid., fol. 165v); and in Pliny, Natural History VII.37, 125, ed. & trans. H. Rackham, 10 vols. (Loeb Classical Library; London and Cambridge, Mass., 1942), II, 588-91 (see the “Dialogue,” S 100 sup. fol. 296v, where Moletti cites Pliny and offers a direct translation of this passage).

35 Tartaglia, Quesiti et invenzione diverse, VIII, qu. 35; trans. Drake & Drabkin, Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy, p. 32.

36 See Kuhn, Thomas S., “Mathematical versus Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (1976), 1–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; rpt. in Kuhn, , The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago, 1977), pp. 31–65, on p. 39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Tartaglia, Niccolò, Nova Scientia (Venice, 1537)Google Scholar; Quesiti, Books I-IV concern ballistics, V & VI fortification, VII & VIII mechanics, and IX mathematics; Maurolico, Francesco, Problemata mechanica cum appendice, ed. Maurolico, Silvestro (Messina, 1613), p. 10 Google Scholar (see Marshall Clagett, Archimedes in the Middle Ages, III. 3 [Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 125 B] [1978], 784-85; “Delle meccaniche lette in Padova l'anno 1594 da Galileo Galilei,” ed. Antonio Favaro (Memorie del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 26.5) (Venice, 1899), and Drake, Stillman, “Galileo Gleanings, V: The Earliest Version of Galileo's Mechanics ,” Osiris, 13 (1958), 262-90, on p. 270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Galileo, “De motu dialogus,” ed. Favaro, in Opere I, 367-408; trans, in Drake, and Drabkin, , Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy, pp. 331-77Google Scholar; Galileo, , “De motuantiquiora,” ed. Favaro, , in Opere I, 251–366 Google Scholar; trans, in Drabkin, and Drake, , Galileo on Motion and Mechanics, pp. 13–123 Google Scholar; see also Drake, Stillman, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography (Chicago & London, 1978), pp. 7–11, 19-31Google Scholar, et passim.

39 For the “Meccaniche dell’ istrumento” see note 37 above; Galileo, “Le meccaniche,” ed. Favaro, in Open, II, 155-90, trans. Stillman Drake, in Drake, and Drabkin, , Galileo on Motion and Mechanics, pp. 147-82.Google Scholar

40 Drake, , Galileo at Work, pp. 34–35, 51.Google Scholar

41 Westman, Robert S., “Humanism and Scientific Roles in the Sixteenth Century,” in Humanismus und Naturwissenschaft, ed. Schmitz, Rudolf and Krafft, Fritz (Boppard, 1980), pp. 83–99 Google Scholar; “The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study,” History of Science, 18(1980), 105-45; see also Laird, “The Scope of Renaissance Mechanics.”