Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T18:51:53.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Honoré Fabri and the Trojan Horse of Inertia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

Michael Elazar
Michael Elazar*
Affiliation:
Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Argument

This paper discusses the theory of motion of the philosopher Honoré Fabri (1608–1688), a senior representative of early modern Jesuit scientists. It argues that the consensus prevailing among historians – according to which Fabri's theory of impetus is diametrically opposed to Galileo's or Descartes' concept of inertia – is false. It shows: that Fabri carefully constructed his concept of impetus in order to easily incorporate the principle of linear conservation of motion (designated here as “limited inertia”), by adopting formal (rather than efficient) causality between impetus and motion and by allowing impetus to act only along straight lines; that he explicitly deemed Aristotle's famous “inertial paradox” not as a paradox at all; and that linear conservation of motion was not limited to “counterfactual” circumstances but played a significant part in his discrete theory of free fall and constituted an integral component of his general physical (and even mathematical) philosophy. However, the paper also shows that Fabri's notion of inertia was restricted to one dimension only, and therefore should indeed be considered “limited.” In his analysis of horizontal projectiles, Fabri explicitly rejected Galileo's important principle of superposition, and thus revealed significant constraints to his “inertial” thinking.

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 1 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1987. William Ockham. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1930. The Works of Aristotle. Translated by Hardie, R. P. and Gaye, R. K.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1953. On the Heavens. Translated by Guthrie, W. K. C.. London: William Heinemann.Google Scholar
Armogathe, Jean-Robert. 2005. “Cartesian Physics and the Eucharist in the Documents of the Holy Office and the Roman Index (1671–1676).” In Receptions of Descartes: Cartesianism and anti-Cartesianism in Early Modern Europe Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, edited by Schmaltz, Tad M., 149–70. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baldini, Ugo. 2004. “Ontology and Mechanics in Jesuit Scholasticism: The Case of Gabriel Vasquez.” In Scientiae et Artes: Die Vermittlung alten und neuen Wissens in Literatur, Kunst und Musik, edited by Mahlmann-Bauer, B., 99–142. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Barbour, Julian B. 1989. Absolute or Relative Motion? A Study from a Machian Point of View of the Discovery and the Structure of Dynamical Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bertoloni Meli, Domenico. 2000. “Inertia.” In Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution: From Copernicus to Newton, edited by Applebaum, W., 326–8. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Blum, Paul Richard. 1999. “Aristotelianism more geometrico: Honoré Fabri.” In Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Conversations with Aristotle, edited by Constance, Blackwell, 234–47. Ashgate: Aldershot.Google Scholar
Boehm, Alfred. 1965. “L'aristotélisme d'Honoré Fabri (1607–1688).” Revue des sciences religieuses 39:305–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Büttner, J., Peter, Damerow, Jürgen, Renn, and Matthias, Schemmel. 2003. “The Challenging Images of Artillery: Practical Knowledge at the Roots of the Scientific Revolution.” In The Power of Images in Early Modern Science, edited by Wolfgang, Lefèvre, Jürgen, Renn, and Urs, Schoepflin, 3–27. Basel: Birkhäuser.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clagett, Marshall. 1959. Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Clavelin, Maurice. 1974. The Natural Philosophy of Galileo: Essay on the Origins and Formation of Classical Mechanics, translated by Pomerans, A. J.. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Conimbricenses. 1594. Commentariorum Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu in octos libros Physicorum Aristotelis Stagyrite. Lyon: Ioannes Baptista Buysson.Google Scholar
Damerow, Peter, Freudenthal, Gideon, McLaughlin, Peter, and Renn, Jürgen. 1992. Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dear, Peter. 1984. “Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools: Continuity and Transformation in the Scientific Revolution.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University.Google Scholar
Dear, Peter. 1995. Discipline & Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Descartes, René. 1983. Oeuvres de Descartes. Edited by Charles, Adam and Paul, Tannery, 11 vols. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin.Google Scholar
Des Chene, Dennis. 1996. Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Des Chene, Dennis. 2001. “Wine and Water: Honoré Fabri on Mixtures.” In Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscularian Theories of Matter, edited by Lüthy, C., Newman, B., and Murdoch, J., 363–79. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dijksterhis, E. J. 1961. The Mechanization of the World Picture. Translated by Dikshoorn, C.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Drake, Stillman. 1964. “Galileo and the Law of Inertia.”American Journal of Physics 32:601–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drake, Stillman. 1974. “Impetus Theory and Quanta of Speed Before and After Galileo.”Physis 16:47–75.Google Scholar
Drake, Stillman. 1975a. “Free Fall from Albert of Saxony to Honoré Fabri.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 5 (4):347–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drake, Stillman. 1975b. “Impetus Theory Reappraised.” Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1):27–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drake, Stillman and Drabkin, I. E.. 1969. Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Fabri, Honoré. 1646. Tractatus physicus de motu locali, in quo effectus omnes, qui ad impetum, motum naturalem, violentum, & mixtum pertinent, explicantur, & ex principiis physicis demonstrantur. Auctore Petro Mousnerio. . .; cuncta excerpta ex praelectionibus . . . Honoré Fabry. Lyon: apud Ioannem Champion.Google Scholar
Fabri, Honoré. 1648. Metaphysica demonstrative, sive scientia rationum universalium, auctore Petro Mousnero, cuncta excerpta ex praelectionibus Honorati Fabri. Lyon: apud Ioannem Champion.Google Scholar
Fabri, Honoré. 1669. Physica, id est Scientia rerum corporearum, in 10 tractatus distributa. Lyon: Anisson.Google Scholar
Fellmann, Emil A. 2002. “Honoré Fabry (1607–1688) als Marhematiker – Eine Reprise.” In The Investigation of Difficult Things: Essays on Newton and the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of D. T. Whiteside, edited by Harman, P. M. and Shapiro, Alan E., 97–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Freudenthal, Gideon. 2000. “A Rational Controversy over Compounding Forces.” In Scientific Controversies: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, edited by Machamer, P., Pera, M., and Baltas, A., 125–42. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabbey, Alan. 1980. “Force and Inertia in the Seventeenth Century: Descartes and Newton.” In Descartes: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, edited by Gaukroger, Stephen, 230–320. Sussex: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Gabbey, Alan. 1998. “New Doctrines of Motion.” In The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Garber, Daniel and Ayers, Michael, 649–679. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. 1989. Two New Sciences. Translated by Drake, S.. Toronto: Wall & Emerson.Google Scholar
Galluzzi, Paolo. 2001. “Gassendi and l'affaire Galilée of the Laws of Motion.” In Galileo in Context, edited by Renn, Jürgen, 239–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Graneau, Peter and Neal, Graneau. 2006. In the Grip of the Distant Universe: The Science of Inertia. Hackensack: World Scientific Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, Edward. 1964. “Motion in the Void and the Principle of Inertia in the Middle Ages.” Isis 55 (3):265–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, Edward, ed. 1974. A Source Book in Medieval Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grant, Edward. 2003. “The Partial Transformation of Medieval Cosmology by Jesuits in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” In Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, edited by Mordechai, Feingold, 127–55. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hanson, Norwood Russel. 1983. “Newton's First Law: A Philosopher's Door into Natural Philosophy.” In Beyond the Edge of Certainty: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy, edited by Colodny, R. G., 6–28. Lanham: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Healy, George Robert. 1956. “Mechanistic Science and the French Jesuits: a Study of the Responses of the Journal de Trevoux (1701–1762) to Descartes and Newton.” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Koyré, Alexandre. 1978. Galileo Studies. Translated by Mepham, J.. Sussex: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1961. Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Edited by Gerhardt, C. I., 7 vols. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.Google Scholar
Lukens, David C. 1979. “An Aristotelian Response to Galileo: Honoré Fabri, S.J. (1608-1688) on the Causal Analysis of Motion.” Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Maier, Annaliese. 1951. Zwei Grundprobleme der scholastischen Naturphilosophie. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.Google Scholar
Maier, Annaliese. 1982. On the Threshold of Exact Science. Edited and translated by Sargent, S. D.. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mancosu, Paolo. 1996. Philosophy of Mathematics & Mathematical Practice in the Seventeeth Century. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molland, A. G. 1982. “The Atomisation of Motion: A Facet of the Scientific Revolution.”Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 13:31–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moody, Ernest A. 1951. “Galileo and Avempace: The Dynamics of the Leaning Tower Experiment.” Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (2):163–93; 12 (3):375–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newton, Isaac. 1999. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Translated by Cohen, I. Bernard and Whitman, A.. Berkely: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Palmerino, Carla R. 2003. “Two Jesuit Responses to Galileo's Science of Motion: Honoré Fabri and Pierre Le Cazre.” In The New Science and Jesuit Science: Seventeenth Century Perspectives (Archimedes: New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, 6), edited by Mordechai, Feingold, 187–227. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmerino, Carla Rita. 2004. “Galileo's Theories of Free Fall and Projectile Motion as Interpreted by Pierre Gassendi.” In The Reception of the Galilean Science of Motion in Seventeenth Century Europe, edited by Palmerino, C. R. and Thijssen, J. M. M. H., 137–164. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redondi, Pietro. 1987. Galileo Heretic. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Siegfried, F. P. 2007. “Accident.” In The Catholic Encyclopedia, edited by Knight, K.. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01096c.htm>..>Google Scholar