Thinking with Objects: The Transformation of Mechanics in the Seventeenth Century - Softcover

Bertoloni Meli, Domenico

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801884276 ISBN 13: 9780801884276

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Thinking with Objects offers a fresh view of the transformation that took place in mechanics during the 17th century. By giving center stage to objects - levers, inclined planes, beams, pendulums, springs, and falling and projected bodies - Domenico Bertoloni Meli provides a unique and comprehensive portrayal of mechanics as practitioners understood it at the time. Bertoloni Meli reexamines such major texts as Galileo's Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, and Newton's Principia, and in them finds a reliance on objects that has escaped proper understanding. From Pappus of Alexandria to Guidobaldo dal Monte, Bertoloni Meli sees significant developments in the history of mechanical experimentation, all of them crucial for understanding Galileo. Bertoloni Meli uses similarities and tensions between dal Monte and Galileo as a springboard for exploring the revolutionary nature of seventeenth-century mechanics. Examining objects helps us appreciate the shift from the study to the practice of mechanics and challenges artificial dichotomies among practical and conceptual pursuits, mathematics, and experiment.

About this title

About the Author

Domenico Bertoloni Meli is a professor of history and philosophy of science at Indiana University.

Review

"Clearly the result of meticulous research and extensive study, I suspect this work will stand the test of time."

(PhiloBiblos)

"The revival of extensive discourses makes this a unique, invaluable resource for any study of the history of science."

(Choice)

"Fascinating reading for anyone interested in the history of science... incredibly thorough."

(David Nuttall Physics Education)

"A brilliant study that is sure to become a classic in its field. Here, the author radically shifts the focus of traditional scholarship and that of historiographic inquiry. He effectively challenges many presuppositions that have been brought to the history of the scientific revolution, including the one that assumes the separation of experimental and mathematical traditions, showing that modern distinctions between theory and practice are just that, modern, and not necessarily applicable to early modern categories. An erudite, profoundly learned, and important work."

(Pamela O. Long, author of Openness, Secrecy, Authorship)

"An important contribution... and his book should find a welcome place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the history of the Scientific Revolution."

(William R. Shea American Historical Review)

"A very interesting book... I have no doubt that it is destined to find a pivotal place in the study of the history of science."

(Michael Box Australian Physics)

"The most important contribution to the history of mechanics of the last decade, likely to become a standard reference and without any doubt a must for every historian of physics."

(Jurgen Renn Renaissance Quarterly)

"A superb, if difficult book, that belongs as basic to the curriculum of early modern history of science."

(Margaret Jacob History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences)

"Meli's stress on the importance of engagements with materiality in the development of seventeenth-century mechanics thus achieves a spectacular vindication in demonstrating the full meaning of Newton's pretensions to be contributing not just to 'mathematics' in the Principia, but to natural philosophy itself."

(Peter Dear British Journal for the History of Science)

"[Meli's] approach is new and convincing... a groundbreaking change of focus."

(Sophie Roux Metascience)

Edition details

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0801884276
• ISBN 13: 9780801884276
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 408