The Social Position and Intellectual Identity of the Renaissance Mathematician-Physicist Giovanni Battista Benedetti: A Case Study in the Socio-Political History of Mechanics

Omodeo, Pietro D.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-90345-3_7

Pietro D. Omodeo²⁴

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science ((BSPS,volume 270))

262 Accesses

Abstract

The scientific work of Giovanni Battista Benedetti, one of the founding fathers of modern mechanics, is an appropriate test case for socio-political history of science. It can help us to address the tension between the social position and intellectual identity of Renaissance scholars who formed the archetype for modern scientists. This chapter deals with the manner in which socio-political coordinates informed Benedetti’s science as far as its 1) demarcation, 2) content, 3) form, and 4) justification are concerned. With social coordinates, I refer to the institutional setting involving Benedetti’s role as a courtier and thus to his function as a court mathematician which, in turn, was linked to the wider socio-economic interests of a Renaissance territorial state. With cultural coordinates, I refer to Benedetti’s intellectual identity as a mathematician as well as his political identification with the wider interests of the Savoy ruling class. The polarity of function and identity constitutes the hermeneutic instrument for my interpretation of Benedetti’s science. Such a dialectic of position and identity should serve as a guide for a non-reductionist socio-cultural history of science.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 119.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 159.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Maier (1951, 304–305) established a connection between Benedetti’s treatment of motion and that of Galileo.
2.
See Lehner and Wendt (2017).
3.
Copernicus’ revolutionary role malgré soi already puzzled Thomas S. Kuhn, who called him at once “radical” and “conservative” and regarded De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, the book propounding the first modern heliocentric theory in mathematical astronomy, “revolution-making” rather than “revolutionary.” Cf. Kuhn (1959, 135, 148).
4.
See Goddu (2010); Granada and Tessicini (2005); and Omodeo (2017b).
5.
See Gramsci (1975, Notebook VII, 869): “le forze materiali sono il contenuto e le ideologie la forma, distinzione di forma e contenuto meramente didascalica, perché le forze materiali non sarebbero concepibili storicamente senza forma e le ideologie sarebbero ghiribizzi individuali senza le forze materiali.”
6.
Ernst Mach’s Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch Dargestellt began with this field demarcation: “Jener Teil der Physik, welcher der älteste und einfachste ist und daher auch als Grundlage für das Verständnis vieler anderer Teile de Physik betrachtet wird, beschäftigt sich mir der Untersuchung der Bewegung und des Gleichgewichts der Massen. Er führt den Namen Mechanik” (1912, 25).
7.
Cf. Drabkin (1960, 10–11).
8.
Cf. Renn and Damerow (2011).
9.
See Lagrange (1788, vi): “Ceux qui aiment l’Analyse, verront avec plaisir la Méchanique en devenir une nouvelle branche, et me fauront gré d’en avoir étendu ainsi le domaine.”
10.
Today, the reference work on this is Galluzzi (1979).
11.
See Lagrange (1788, 158): “La dynamique est. la Science des forces accéleratrices ou retardatrices, et des mouvemens variés qu’elles peuvent produire.”
12.
Lagrange (1788, 188): “Ce principe envisagé analitiquement, consiste en ce que dans le mouvement des corps qui agissent les uns sur les autres, la somme des produits des masses par les vitesses et pare les espaces parcourus, est. un minimum.”
13.
For a thorough study of the developments of mechanics up to Lagrange, see Pulte (1989).
14.
See Long (2011, ch. 1), and Omodeo (2017a, 119–150).
15.
See Hessen (2009, 41–102).
16.
See Zilsel (2000).
17.
See Chap. 3 “Socio-Political Coordinates of Early Modern Mechanics: A Preliminary Discussion” in this volume.
18.
Cf. Damerow et al. (2004).
19.
For an overview, see Drake and Drabkin (1969, “Introduction,” 3–60). Dijksterhuis (1956) remains a valid introduction to Archimedes. On the reception of his hydrostatics, see Chalmers (2017). On Aristotelian mechanics, see van Leeuwen (2016). See also Nenci (2011). On other important aspects of the renewal of mechanics during the Renaissance, see Renn and Damerow (2010, 2011); Valleriani (2013); Becchi et al. (2013).
20.
The standard reference work on Benedetti is Bordiga (1985). For a new general introduction to Benedetti’s major work, see Omodeo and Renn (2018).
21.
See Maccagni (1967).
22.
Cf. Omodeo and Renn (2018), Chap. 4. Benedetti’s importance for the development of the concept of inertia has been stressed by Koyré [1939] 1966, 47–60. As Koyré remarks (1966, 122): “Jean-Baptiste Benedetti est. très certainement le physicien italien le plus interessant du XVI^e siècle; il est. aussi celui dont le rôle historique fut le plus important: en effet, son influence sur le jeune Galilée qui, dans son traité de Motu, le suit pas à pas, est. indéniable et profonde.”
23.
Cf. Giusti (1993).
24.
In his major work, Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber, 141, Benedetti introduced his section De mechanicis as follows (trans. Drake and Drabkin 1969, 166): “Now it is my desire to publish a few items that will, I believe, prove not unwelcome to those who concern themselves with mechanics, items which have never before been dealt with or have not been sufficiently well explained. I may thus either show my desire to be helpful or at least give some evidence of possessing a bit of talent and industry. And perhaps in this way alone may I leave behind me proof that I ever lived at all.”
25.
See Gaurico (1552, f. 76r).
26.
See, among other publications on this lesser-known scientific production of Benedetti, Roero (1997, 37–66) and Mammola (2014).
27.
See Cardano (1966) and Omodeo (2017b).
28.
By “corporate” I refer to the esprit de corps of a group that considers itself a bounded entity whose interests are marked as separate from other groups. This particular meaning of corporation originated with the guild culture of the Middle Ages and it precedes the modern sense of a professional group or legal body.
29.
See Roero (1997, 57–58).
30.
Lomazzo (2006, 177): “Del Sig. Gio. Battista Benedetti Matematico”; Brahe (1916, 251–253).
31.
The expression stems from Greenblatt (1980).
32.
This theme is discussed in detail in Biagioli (1989, 1993).
33.
For an insightful treatment of the Renaissance debates on the certainty of mathematics, see Axworthy (2016, Chap. 2).
34.
For a comprehensive historical reconstruction of Turin in this time, see Ricuperati (1998).
35.
See Pollak (1991).
36.
See Doglio (1998).
37.
Cf. Tessari (1993). On Benedetti’s fountain, see Maccagni (1967, 353–354).
38.
See Catarinella and Salsotto (1998).
39.
See Norbert (2002, 73): “Durch das Bemühen um dis Struktur der höfischen Gesellschaft und damit um das Verständnis diner der letzten großen niche-bürgerlichen Figurationen des Abendlandes eröffnet man sich also mittelbar zugleich einen Zugang zum erweiterten Verständnis der eigenen berufsbürgerlich-städtischen-industriellen Gesellschaft.”
40.
Doglio (2005).
41.
Emanuele Filiberto’s passion for mathematics was well documented. Among others, the Venetian ambassador to Turin Giovanni Correr reported on it in 1566: “That duke is no man of letters but he loves the virtuosi. Hence, he has many of them by him; he likes to listen to their reasoning and he asks them questions. However, there is no subject that delights him more than the mathematics, as this science is not only apt but also necessary to the profession of military commander.” This translation from is from Firpo (1983, 123).
42.
See Biagioli (1996, 193–238).
43.
Benedetti (1585, 204, my translation): “Ad lectorem. Ut nil magis virtutis est. proprium, quam agitari, et incessabili motu prodesse. Ac veluti fulgidum sydus ante oculus spectantium commicare. Ita mihi mathematicis iisque maxime philosophicis speculationibus dedito, saepissime, ut in principium summorum aulis, et amplissimis civitatibus degenti, ubi multa semper Nobilium mira curiositate, sciendi desiderio, et conferendi cupiditate referta, versantur, ingenia, contigit, modo ab his, modo ab illis, aut verbis tentari, aut literis provocari ad disserendum, de his, in quorum studiis versamur. Quarum concertationum et responsionum, quoniam non omnino indigna existimavi, quae memoria comendarentur, partem aliquam apud me conseruivi. Ubi vero per ocium licuit, relegi, ac tandem de manu mittere decrevi. Tum ut scientia ipsa quo magis diffundetur, crescat; et quicquid valeo, sine invidia in communem utilitatem conferam. Tum ut virorum praestantissimorum, qui me suis interrogationibus excitaverunt, quantum in me erit, gratitudine ergo, nomina reddam immortalia, et eorum exemplo alios, ocio sordidiore abiecto, quod solet iurialium praecipue excelsa ingenia corrumpere, ad sciscitandum conferendum, et disserendum, de rebus seriis, et quae usui aliquando esse possint, et quandoque evulgari mereantur, alliciam. Tu interim nostris laboribus fruere, et nostram diligentiam boni, et aequi consule, et Vale.”
44.
See Mamino (1989, 429–449).
45.
See Cecchini and Roero (2004, 31–66).
46.
See Cecchini and Roero (2004, 31–66).
47.
For a stimulating Weberian treatment of institutional changes induced by bureaucratic rationalization (along with market commodification) in the early modern period, cf. Clark (2006), in particular the methodological considerations on 8–10. The reference work is Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß einer verstehenden Soziologie (1921).
48.
For a clear exposition of these functional aspects of science in capitalist society one can still rely on the classic of Marxist sociology from Nikolai Bukharin, “Theory and Practice from the Standpoint of Dialectical Materialism.” See Bukharin (1931, 9–33).
49.
Cf. Baracca et al. (1979).
50.
Cf. Daston and Galison on “epistemic virtues” in Objectivity (2007, 39–42). I borrow the concept to stress the rootedness of an epistemological requirement such as systematization in the social environment of the “knower.” For a similar perspective, see also Kuhn (1996, Postscript-1969, 184–186).
51.
Benedetti (1553, f. 5r).
52.
Benedetti (1553, f. 5v): “Adde quod Mathematicae disciplinae, neque tantum requirunt splendorem, neque si quis peritus linguarum contendat ad elegantiam rem reducere, egregium quid effecerit, quia mutato usu Mathematicae loquendi, ipsiusque scientiae terminis, sensum facile perturbaverit, et ex nihilo nihil apprehensum obtinuerit. Quare morem scholarum sequutus, obstentatione elegantiae explosa, verbis nudis in demonstrationibus usus sum, hac in parte veterum vestigia sequutus, qui nudis verbis scientias resque ipsas docebant, quem modum docendi, nobis devastarunt scioli vel potius circulatores, garruli, rebus ipsoque iudicio destituti, garrulitate siquidem apud vulgus, laudem summam consequuntur, et pro doctis circunferuntur, nec mirum, cum scientiarum perfecta exquisitaque perita, paucissimis detur, non obstante quod multi permulta de omnis generis et scientiis et artibus scribant, permultaque garriant, fucis suis, et ampullis imperitorum oculos perstringentes [...].”
53.
Baldi (1707, 140): “GIO[VANNI] BATTISTA Benedetti veneziano attese alle matematiche, nelle quali servì i Duchi di Savoia. Scrisse un libro di gnomonica, il quale toccò molte cose appartenenti alle dimostrazioni della detta disciplina, se non che viene ripreso da più esquisiti di non haver’osservato quel metodo, e quella purità dell’insegnare, che ricercano le matematiche, et è stato osservato dagl’ottimi Greci, e dagl’imitatori loro. Scrisse anco alcune altre cose leggiere, e di nessun momento.”
54.
Bendetti (1585, 298): “Miror quod cum in Aristotele sis versatus, in tuis tamen scriptis philosophum a Mathematico separes, quasi mathematicus non sit adeo philosophus, ut est. naturalis, et metaphysicus, cum multo magis quam ii philosophus sit appellandus, si ad veritatem suarum conclusionum respiciamus.”
55.
Cf. De Pace (1993, 228–229).
56.
Bendetti (1585, 298): “Verum quidem est., te in huiusmodi errore solum non versari; sed gravius est., quod cum vos videatis etiam res morales sub philosophiae appellationem cadere, non animadvertatis divinas scientias mathematicas etiam philosophiae nomine ornandas esse. Quod si eiusdem nomen penitius considerare velimus, inveniemus aperte, mathematico magis illud ipsum quam cuilibet alio convenire, cum nullus ex aliis tam certo sciat id quem affirmat quam mathematicus, neque aliquis sit, qui in cognitionis, et scientiae cupiditatem magis ducantur, ut aperte patet, cum nec etiam ipsi sensui det locum, neque aliquid praesupponat, quem non sit ita verum et intellectui notum, ut nulla quaevis potentia, illud esse falsum ostendere queat.”
57.
Ibid., 285: “Si vera esset animorum illa transmigratio quam sibi Italicae sapientiae Pater Pythagoras effinxerat; tuam, meanque existimarem animam canis, quandoque venatici fuisse.”
58.
See “The Invention of the Pythagorean Cosmology” (Omodeo 2014a, 167–170).
59.
Bendetti (1585, f. A3v). On his cosmology, see Di Bono (1987, 283–300), and Omodeo (2009).
60.
Bendetti (1585, 190–191): “Pythagoreorum opinionem de sonitu corporum coelestium non fuisse ab Aristotele sublatam.”
61.
For a detailed discussion of Benedetti’s foundations of physics, see Omodeo and Renn, Science in Court Society (in press), ch. 7.
62.
In the preface to the second edition of the Demonstratio proportionum motum localium (1555), Benedetti wrote (my translation): “They could not concede that Aristotle was mistaken in any way, because they do not regard him as a human being. Rather, they confer upon him the celestial condition of a pagan divinity. And they see even slight disagreement as a sin. Therefore [they believe that] I committed (and still commit) heresy if, according to their judgment, I do not follow the pure and authentic mind of Aristotle’s doctrine in any manner.” For the original text, see Benedetti’s original text in Maccagni (1967, 21): “Ne vero Aristotelem ullo modo errasse concederent, cum illum non infra humanae conditionis terminum habeant, sed potius veluti coeleste quoddam numen sibi proponant, censeantque nefas esse si vel latum quidem unguem ab eo quis dissentiat, in hac potius haeresi fuisse, ac etiamnum esse, ut me germanum et genuinum sensum Aristotelicae opinionis nequaquam ex authoris mente assecutum existiment.”
63.
Trotto (1625, 2–3): “[...] questi huomini saputi, tocchi dal Prencipe, come instrumenti musici bene accordati, subito rendono ciascuno il suo suono con le parole et quanto meglio possono procurare d’essere intesi discorrendo, e di dar diletto con le buone ragioni, et anco di tirare gli altri al suo parere, come ad una consonanza della verità: perché ognuno dice quello ch’egli sa o crede almeno sia vero. E quindi si veggono trattare hor cose naturali, hor morali, hor mathematiche. Sì che egli quasi come uno Apolline si può dire, che sta fra le Muse, intorno al fonte, che uscì dal colpo del piede del cavallo alato.”
64.
See Arma (1580, f. A2v): “Il Signor Benedetti l’indomani/ Col signor Berga, insiem’ a l’Ottonaglio/ Forn’in pensier’ a me d’assai lontani,/ Che’l Sol tirass’a sé com grand’abbagio/ Ogni cosa si com’havesse mani.”
65.
Arma (1580., f. A4r): “E tutto quest’in scritti fu donato/ A Sua Altezza, con tutti soi detti./ E fu dal Dottor Berga conformato./ Il che fece’l signore Benedetti./Fu poi d’altre proposte ragionato/ E de gl’occolte cose, e soi effetti.”
66.
Bucci (1583, 7–8). Cf. Mammola (2013, 6–8).
67.
Omodeo (2008).
68.
Omodeo (2014a, 142–149) and Omodeo (2014b).
69.
Patrizi (1975, n. XXVII, 53): “Molto Magnifico et Eccellentissimo Signore, mi rallegro con Vostra Signoria, che più tosto che non credea si è rilevata dal male, e li rendo moltissime gratie dell’haver presentato il mio libro a quel Serenissimo Prencipe, e ricevuto il favore, che Ella mi avvisi ciò che haverà detto, dopo che l’havrà letto. Et se per sorte per li molti negozii il libro andasse in oblio, spero da Lei il rimedio di un poco di ricordanza, la quale, se partorirà alcun segno che Sua Altezza Serenissima l’habbia havuto caro, mi sarà carissimo e tutto l’obbligo l’haverò a Vostra Signoria e all’amor suo verso me.”
70.
Patrizi to Benedetti (Ferrara, 18 January 1588), Patrizi (1975, n. XXX, 57–58).
71.
See Doglio (1998, 621, 625).
72.
See Clavius 1589, ff. *4r–*5r.
73.
The case of the German Empire, where the Jesuits virtually obtained the monopoly of university teaching in Catholic countries, is telling. See Hellyer (2005). A thoughtful study on the political rationale behind the establishment of Jesuit education in an age of Konfessionalisierung and the wars of religion is found in Gui (1989).
74.
See Grendler (2002, 42–44).
75.
Cf. Omodeo (2014c).
76.
Patrizi to Benedetti (Ferrara, 21 March 1583) in Patrizi (1975, 39).
77.
See Tonso (1596, 141): “Neque vero liberalium disciplinarum omniumque artium colendarum quam susceperat cogitationem unquam deposuit: nam et publicum earum Gymnasium pro tempore in oppido Monteregali instituit: et qui viri in quacunque scientia excellerent undique conquisuit. [...] Mathematicos illustres Franciscum Othonarium, et Io. Baptistam Benedictum Venetum.”
78.
Bordiga derived this information from a manuscript of Cristini’s preserved in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. See Bordiga (1985, 596–597).
79.
The historian of Piedmontese Universities Silvio Pivano already complained in the 1920s about the lack of relevant documents. See Pivano (1928, 19–22).
80.
See Ziggelaar (1983, 211, 214).
81.
See Steinmetz (2010). For an insightful study on cultural production in the time of European confessionalization, see Mulsow (2007).
82.
See Omodeo (2012).
83.
A case in point would be mercantilism. Karl Polanyi, in his valuable reconstruction of the historical premises of the market society and free market ideology on the correlation and interaction between politics and economy in the constitution of nineteenth century liberalism, has pointed out that the tension, in early modern Great Britain, between the economic interests of those benefiting from the enclosures and the social interests of the pauperized people resulted in political regulation. This determined the pace of the socio-economic transformation that would eventually lead to the Industrial Revolution and made the process sustainable by diluting its disruptive effects. See Polanyi (2001, 35–40), whose main concern was to present an insightful case for government playing a central role in modern economic life. Cf. Polanyi (2001, 40): “England withstood without grave damage the calamity of the enclosures only because the Tudors and the earl Stuarts used the power of the Crown to slow down the process of economic improvement until it became socially bearable—employing the power of the central government to relieve the victims of the transformation, and attempting to canalize the process of change so as to make its course less devastating.”
84.
For the relation between princely patrons and academies see, among others, Biagioli (1995, 1417–1453). On early capitalist Netherlands and science, cf. Cook (2007).
85.
An example of technical reductionism is Drake and Drabkin’s translation of Disputationes de quibusdam placitis Arist[otelis] which excludes some of the most compelling philosophical sections on the definition of space, infinity, and time, thus missing the connection of Benedetti’s considerations on fundamental concepts and his treatment of motion through media and void. Cf. Drake and Drabkin (1969, 196–223).

References

Arma, Francesco. 1580. Queste sono parti delle propposte tenute col Serenis. Prencipe nostro. Turin: Appresso gli heredi del Bevilacqua.
Google Scholar
Axworthy, Angela. 2016. Le Mathématicien renaissant et son savoir: Le Statut des mathématiques selon Oronce Fine. Paris: Classique Garnier.
Google Scholar
Baldi, Bernardino. 1707. Cronica de matematici overo epitome dell’istoria delle vite loro. Urbino: Per Angelo Ant. Monticelli.
Book Google Scholar
Baracca, Angelo, Stefano Ruffo, and Arturo Russo. 1979. Scienza e industria (1848–1915): Gli sviluppi scientifici connessi alla seconda rivoluzione industriale. Rome-Bari: Laterza.
Google Scholar
Becchi, Antonio, Domenico Bertoloni Meli, and Enrico Gamba, eds. 2013. Guidobaldo del Monte (1545–1607): Theory and practice of the mathematical disciplines from Urbino to Europe. Berlin: Edition Open Access. http://edition-open-access.de/proceedings/4/index.html.
Google Scholar
Benedetti, Giovanni Battista. 1553. Resolutio omnium Euclidis problematum. Venice: apud Bartholomaeum Caesanum.
Google Scholar
———. 1585. Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber. Turin: Apud haeredem Nicolai Bevilaquae.
Google Scholar
Biagioli, Mario. 1989. The social status of Italian mathematicians (1450–1600). History of Science 27: 41–95.
Article Google Scholar
———. 1993. Galileo, courtier: The practice of science in the culture of absolutism. Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press.
Book Google Scholar
———. 1995. Le prince et les savants: La civilté scientifique au 17^e siécle. Annales: Historie, Sciences Sociales 6: 1417–1453.
Article Google Scholar
———. 1996. Etiquette, interdependence, and sociability in seventeenth-century science. Critical Inquiry 22 (2): 193.
Article Google Scholar
Bordiga, Giovanni. [1926] 1985. Giovanni Battista Benedetti, filosofo e matematico veneziano nel secolo XVI, 585–754. Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti.
Google Scholar
Brahe, Tycho. 1916. In Opera omnia, ed. John Louis Emil Dreyer. Copenhagen: Libraria Gyldendaliana.
Google Scholar
Bucci, Agostino. 1583. Disputatio de principatu partium corporis. Turin: Apud haeredes Nicolai Beuilaquae.
Google Scholar
Bukharin, Nikolai. 1931. Theory and practice from the standpoint of dialectical materialism. In Science at the cross roads: Papers presented to the international congress of the history of science and technology (London, 1931), 9–33. London: Kniga.
Google Scholar
Cardano, Girolamo. 1966. Encomium geometriae recitatum anno 1535 in Academia Platina Mediolana. In Opera omnia, vol. 4, 440–445. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog.
Google Scholar
Catarinella, Annamaria, and Irene Salsotto. 1998. L’università e i collegi. In Storia di Torino: Dalla dominazione francese alla ricomposizione dello Stato (1536–1630), ed. Giuseppe Ricuperati, vol. 3, 523–567. Turin: Einaudi.
Google Scholar
Cecchini, Michela, and Clara Silvia Roero. 2004. I corrispondenti di Giovanni Battista Benedetti. Physis 41 (1): 31–66.
Google Scholar
Chalmers, Alan. 2017. One hundred years of pressure: Hydrostatics from Stevin to Newton. Cham: Springer Nature.
Book Google Scholar
Clark, William. 2006. Academic charisma and the origins of the research university. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar
Clavius, Christophorus. 1589. Euclidis Elementorum Lib. XV. Rome: Bartholomaeum Grassium.
Google Scholar
Cook, Harold John. 2007. Matters of exchange: Commerce, medicine, and science in the Dutch golden age. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Book Google Scholar
Damerow, Peter, Gideon Freudenthal, Peter McLaughlin, and Jürgen Renn. 2004. Exploring the limits of preclassical mechanics: A study of conceptual development in early modern science: Free fall and compounded motion in the work of Descartes. 2nd ed. New York: Springer.
Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books.
Google Scholar
De Pace, Anna. 1993. Le matematiche e il mondo: Ricerche su un dibattito in Italia nella seconda metà del Cinquecento. Milan: Franco Angeli.
Google Scholar
Di Bono, Mario. 1987. L’astronomia copernicana nell’opera di Giovan Battista Benedetti. In Cultura, scienze e tecniche nella Venezia del Cinquecento: atti del convegno internazionale di studio Giovan Battista Benedetti e il suo tempo, 283–300. Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze,Lettere ed Arti.
Google Scholar
Dijksterhuis, Eduard Jan. 1956. Archimedes. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
Google Scholar
Doglio, Maria Luisa. 1998. Intellettuali e cultura letteraria (1562–1630). In Storia di Torino: Dalla dominazione francese alla ricomposizione dello Stato (1536–1630), ed. Giuseppe Ricuperati, vol. 3, 599–653. Turin: Einaudi.
Google Scholar
———. 2005. Dall’Institutio al monumento, introduzione a Carlo Emanuele I di Savoia, Simulacro del vero principe. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.
Google Scholar
Drabkin, I.E. 1960. Introduction to on motion. In Galileo Galilei, on motion, and on mechanics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Google Scholar
Drake, Stillman, and I.E. Drabkin. 1969. Mechanics in sixteenth-century Italy. Madison-London: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Google Scholar
Firpo, Luigi. 1983. Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti al Senato: tratte dalle migliori edizioni disponibili e ordinate. Vol. XI. Turin: Bottega di Erasmo.
Google Scholar
Galluzzi, Paolo. 1979. Momento: Studi galileiani. Rome: Ed. Dell’Ateneo & Bizzari.
Google Scholar
Gaurico, Luca. 1552. Tractatus astrologicus in quo agitur de praeteritis multorum hominum accidentibus per proprias eorum genituras ad unguem examinatis. Venice: Navo.
Google Scholar
Giusti, Enrico. 1993. Euclides reformatus: La teoria delle proporzioni nella scuola galileiana. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri.
Google Scholar
Goddu, André. 2010. Copernicus and the Aristotelian tradition: Education, reading, and philosophy in Copernicus’s path to heliocentrism. Leiden: Brill.
Book Google Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio. 1975. In Quaderni del carcere, ed. Valentino Gerratana. Turin: Einaudi.
Google Scholar
Granada, Miguel Ángel, and Dario Tessicini. 2005. Copernicus and Fracastoro: The dedicatory letters to pope Paul III, the history of astronomy, and the quest for patronage. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 36 (3): 431–476.
Article Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. 1980. Renaissance self-fashioning: From more to Shakespeare. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar
Grendler, Paul F. 2002. I tentativi dei gesuiti d’entrare nelle università italiane tra ‘500 e ‘600. In Gesuiti e università in Europa (secoli XVI–XVIII), ed. Gian Paolo Brizzi and Roberto Greci, 37–51. Bologna: CLUEB.
Google Scholar
Gui, Francesco. 1989. I Gesuiti e la rivoluzione boema: alle origini della guerra dei trent’anni. Milan: Franco Angeli.
Google Scholar
Hellyer, Marcus. 2005. Catholic physics: Jesuit natural philosophy in early modern Germany. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press.
Google Scholar
Hessen, Boris. 2009. The social and economic roots of Newton’s Principia [1931]. In The social and economic roots of the Scientific Revolution: Texts by Boris Hessen and Henryk Grossmann, ed. Gideon Freudenthal and Peter McLaughlin. Dordrecht: Springer.
Google Scholar
Koyré, Alexander. [1939] 1966. Études galiléennes. Paris: Hermann.
Google Scholar
———. 1966. Jean Baptiste Benedetti, critique d’Aristote. In Études d’histoire de la pensée scientifique, 122–146. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1959. The Copernican revolution: Planetary astronomy in the development of western thought. New York: Random House.
Google Scholar
———. 1996. The structures of scientific revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar
Lagrange, Joseph-Louis. (Giuseppe Ludovico)1788. Mécanique analitique. Paris: Chez la veuve Desaint.
Google Scholar
Lehner, Christoph, and Helge Wendt. 2017. Mechanics in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Isis 108 (1): 26–39.
Article Google Scholar
Lomazzo, Giovan Paolo. 2006. Rime ad imitazione de i grotteschi usati da’ pittori. Rome: Vacchiarelli.
Google Scholar
Long, Pamela O. 2011. Artisan/practitioners and the rise of the new sciences, 1400–1600. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press.
Google Scholar
Maccagni, Carlo. 1967. Le speculazioni giovanili ‘de motu’ di Giovanni Battista Benedetti. Pisa: Domus Galilaeana.
Google Scholar
Mach, Ernst. 1912. Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung historisch-kritisch Dargestellt. Leipzig: Brockhaus.
Google Scholar
Maier, Anneliese. 1951. Die Impetustheorie. In Zwei Grundprobleme der scholastischen Naturphilosophie, 113–314. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
Google Scholar
Mamino, Sergio. 1989. Scienziati ed architetti alla corte di Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia: Giovan Battista Benedetti. Studi Piemontesi 18: 429–449.
Google Scholar
Mammola, Simone. 2013. Una disputa storico-filosofica nella Torino del ‘500: Agostino Bucci interprete di Parmenide. Rivista di Storia dell’Università di Torino 2/2.
Google Scholar
———. 2014. Il problema della grandezza della terra e dell’acqua negli scritti di Alessandro Piccolomini, Antonio Berga e G.B. Benedetti e laprogressiva dissoluzione della cosmologia delle sfere elementari nel secondo ‘500. Preprint 459. Berlin: Max Plank Institute for the History of Science. https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/sites/default/files/Preprints/P459.pdf.
Mulsow, Martin. 2007. Netzwerke gegen Netzwerke: Polemik und Wissensproduktion im politischen Antiquarianismus um 1600. In Die unanständige Gelehrtenrepublik: Wissen, Libertinage und Kommunikation in der Frühen Neuzeit, 143–190. Stuttgart-Weimar: J. B. Metzler.
Chapter Google Scholar
Nenci, Elio. 2011. Bernardino Baldi’s In mechanica Aristotelis problemata exercitationes. Berlin: Edition Open Access. http://www.edition-open-sources.org/sources/3/index.html.
Norbert, Elias. 2002. Die höfische Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Google Scholar
Omodeo, Pietro D. 2008. La Stravagantographia di un ‘filosofo stravagante’. Bruniana & Campanelliana 14 (1): 11–23.
Google Scholar
———. 2009. La cosmologia infinitistica di Giovanni Battista Benedetti. Bruniana & Campanelliana 15 (1): 181–190.
Google Scholar
———. 2012. Renaissance science and literature: Benedetti, Ovid and the transformations of Phaeton’s myth after Copernicus. Science & Education 21: 1–8. Special Issue on “Science and Literature”.
Google Scholar
———. 2014a. Copernicus in the cultural debates of the Renaissance: Reception, legacy, transformation. Leiden: Brill.
Book Google Scholar
———. 2014b. Efemeridi e critica all’astrologia tra filosofia naturale ed etica: La contesa tra Benedetti e Altavilla nel tardo Rinascimento torinese. Preprint 458. Berlin: The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
Google Scholar
———. 2014c. Torino, 1593: Motivi dell’opposizione universitaria ai gesuiti nel contesto degli antagonismi europei del tempo. Rivista di Storia dell’Università di Torino 3 (1): 1–18.
Google Scholar
———. 2017a. L’eredità di Boris Hessen: Per un approccio socio-politico alla scienza in età moderna. In Boris Hessen, Le radici sociali ed economiche della meccanica di Newton, ed. Gerardo Ienna, 119–150. Rome: Castelvecchi.
Google Scholar
———. 2017b. Utilitas astronomiae in the Renaissance: The rhetoric and epistemology of astronomy. In The structures of practical knowledge, ed. Matteo Valleriani, 307–332. Cham: Springer Nature.
Chapter Google Scholar
Omodeo, Pietro D., and Jürgen Renn. 2018. Science in Court Society: Giovan Battista Benedetti’s Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber. Berlin: Edition Open Access.
Google Scholar
Patrizi, Francesco. 1975. In Lettere ed opuscoli inediti, ed. Danilo Aguzzi Barbagli. Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento.
Google Scholar
Pivano, Silvio. 1928. Emanuele Filiberto e le Università di Mondovì e di Torino. In Studi pubblicati dalla Regia Università di Torino nel IV centenario della nascita di Emanuele Filiberto, 1–34. Turin: Università di Torino.
Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. [1944] 2001. The great transformation: The political and economic origins of our time. Boston: Beacon Press.
Google Scholar
Pollak, Martha D. 1991. Turin 1564–1680: Urban design, military culture, and the creation of the absolutist capital. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Google Scholar
Pulte, Helmut. 1989. Des Prinzip des kleinsten Wirkung und die Kraftkonzeptionen der rationalen Mechanik: eine Untersuchung zur Grundlegungsproblematik bei Leonhard Euler, Pierre Louis Moreau de Moupertuis und Joseph Louis Lagrange. Stuttgart: Steiner.
Google Scholar
Renn, Jürgen, and Peter Damerow. 2010. Guidobaldo del Monte’s Mechanicorum Liber. Berlin: Edition Open Access. http://www.edition-open-sources.org/sources/1/index.html.
———. 2011. The equilibrium controversy: Guidobaldo del Monte’s critical notes on the mechanics of Jordanus and Benedetti and their historical and conceptual background. Berlin: Edition Open Access. http://www.edition-open-sources.org/sources/2/index.html.
Google Scholar
Ricuperati, Giuseppe. 1998. Storia di Torino. Vol. 3. Dalla dominazione francese alla ricomposizione dello Stato (1536–1630). Turin: Einaudi.
Google Scholar
Roero, Clara Silvia. 1997. Giovan Battista Benedetti and the scientific environment of Turin in the 16^th century. Centaurus 39 (1): 37–66.
Article Google Scholar
Steinmetz, Dirk. 2010. Die Gregorianische Kalenderreform von 1582: Korrektur der christlichen Zeitrechnung in der Frühen Neuzeit. Oftersheim: Verlag Dirk Steinmetz.
Google Scholar
Tessari, Antonio Secondo. 1993. Sul soggiorno di Andrea Palladio a Torino per le questioni militari di Emanuele Filiberto. Studi Piemontesi 22 (1): 9–20.
Google Scholar
Tonso, Giovanni. 1596. De vita Emmanuelis Philiberti Allobrogum ducis, et Subalpinorum principis, libri duo. Turin: Apud Io. Dominicum Tarinum.
Google Scholar
Trotto, Bernardo. 1625. Dialoghi del Matrimonio e vita vedovile... di nuovo ristampati. Turin: Appresso il Pizzaiglio, Stampator Ducale.
Google Scholar
Valleriani, Matteo. 2013. Metallurgy, ballistics, and epistemic instruments: The Nova scientia of Nicolò Tartaglia. Berlin: Edition Open Access. http://www.edition-open-sources.org/sources/6/index.html.
Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Joyce. 2016. The Aristotelian mechanics: Text and diagrams. Cham: Springer.
Book Google Scholar
Ziggelaar, August. 1983. The papal bull of 1582: Promulgating a reform of the calendar. In Gregorian reform of the calendar: Proceedings of the Vatican conference to commemorate its 400th anniversary, ed. George V. Coyne, Michael A. Hoskin, and Olaf Pedersen, 201–239. Rome: Pontifical Academy of the Sciences.
Google Scholar
Zilsel, Edgar. [1942] 2000. The sociological roots of science. Social Studies of Science 30 (6): 935–939.
Google Scholar

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, ERC EarlyModernCosmology, Venice, Italy
Pietro D. Omodeo

Authors

Pietro D. Omodeo
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pietro D. Omodeo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas & Minerva Humanities Center, University of Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
Rivka Feldhay
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
Jürgen Renn
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
Matthias Schemmel
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
Matteo Valleriani

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Omodeo, P.D. (2018). The Social Position and Intellectual Identity of the Renaissance Mathematician-Physicist Giovanni Battista Benedetti: A Case Study in the Socio-Political History of Mechanics. In: Feldhay, R., Renn, J., Schemmel, M., Valleriani, M. (eds) Emergence and Expansion of Preclassical Mechanics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 270. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90345-3_7

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90345-3_7
Published: 25 October 2018
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90343-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90345-3
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics