The first twelve chapters are a lengthy discussion of Aristotle’s Physics IV 8. One can conveniently subdivide the Physical Disputations into five sections (see table 7.1 below). His treatment culminates with cosmological speculations, including a defense of the Copernican system. 1 Benedetti moreover reworks and transforms basic concepts of physics, such as place and time, and propounds anti-Aristotelian natural views such as spatial infinity and the existence of the void. As we have seen, the reader of Benedetti’s Diversae speculationes is provided with a brief book dedicated to Book 5 of Euclid’s Elements, directly following the Physical Disputations. In actual fact, his conceptual tools for the treatment of motion are principally derived from Archimedes’s Floating Bodies and Euclid’s Book 5 on proportions. He calls his approach mathematical ( inconcussa mathematicae philosophiae basis). Benedetti does not limit himself to criticism but rather seeks to provide a new approach to and foundation of physics and cosmology, beginning with the theory of motion. The Physical Disputations are a discussion of and an objection to Aristotle’s theses on local motion and cosmology as presented in Physics and De caelo, and partly also in Meteorologica and Metaphysica. PB - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften EOS is a cooperation between the University of Oklahoma Libraries, the Department for the History of Science der University of Oklahoma, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. The sources are historical books, manuscripts, documents, or other archival materials that are otherwise difficult to access. Academic editions of primary sources in the history of science are published in online, digital, and print formats that present facsimiles, transcriptions, and often translations of original works with an introduction to the author, the text, and the context in which it was written. Benedetti regarded mechanics as a model, but he enlarged his perspective to include the most varied fields of investigation and concretely to demonstrate the fruitfulness of his approach to universal knowledge, astronomy, physics, meteorology, and even to ethics.Edition Open Sources (EOS) pioneers a new paradigm in the publishing of historical sources. The apparent fragmentary nature of his work hides a fundamental unity of the conception and the method, both of which rest on geometry. Benedetti is emblematic of his time and of the non-linearity of the historical process of Renaissance science with its multicentric institutions and scientific networks. In the extensive introduction, his achievement is presented in its rich complexity. It also bore witness to the intensity of the cultural debates going on in Turin or connecting it with other centers, especially Venice.This open access edition makes the Benedetti’s work accessible to a large scholarly readership. It aimed to make the quality of the court mathematician’s research and skills publicly appreciable. The Diversae speculationes appeared in a series of prestigious volumes aimed at celebrating the magnificence of the court and the capital. Benedetti presented these as short treatises or letters addressed to gentlemen, courtiers, scholars, engineers, and practitioners of different arts. ![]() ![]() The first edition was an elegant folio, which includes heterogeneous writings not only on mathematics and physics but also on technical and philosophical issues. This is due to several factors, principal among which is the relative rarity of his major work, Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber (Book including various mathematical and physical speculations), 1585.This work was a major contribution to Renaissance science, especially due to its insights on mechanics, the mathematical approach to natural investigation, and the connection of celestial and terrestrial dynamics in a post-Copernican perspective. However, the theoretical and historical relevance of his work is still obscure in many respects. ![]() T2 - Science in Court Society: Giovan Battista Benedetti’s Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber (Turin, 1585)ĪB - Giovanni Battista Benedetti is counted as one of the most brilliant mathematical and philosophical minds of the late Italian Renaissance. Berlin: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften. In: Science in Court Society: Giovan Battista Benedetti’s Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum et physicarum liber (Turin, 1585). Omodeo, Pietro Daniel and Renn, Jürgen (2019).
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