Treccani History of Science
The Scientific Revolution
F2 – The domains of knowledge (part 1)
Edited by Enrico Giusti
The Aristotelianism and its alternatives
• 1. The organisation of knowledge at the beginning of the Scientific revolution
• 2. The competing programs of knowledge
• 3. The experimental corpuscular-mechanism: consolidation of hegemony
• 4. Rising disciplinary differentiation and restructuring of natural philosophy by late 17th Century.
Body, matter and space
• 1. Aristotelian conceptions of body, place and void.
• 2. Scholastic conceptions of body, place and void.
• 3. The novatores on body, place and void.
• 4. Descartes, Gassendi and Hobbes.
• 5. Cartesians and Gassendists.
• 6. Boyle, Newton and Leibniz.
Alchemy
• 1. The social conditions of the development and reception of alchemy in the seventeenth century
• 2. Scientific issues raised by alchemy
• 3. The place of alchemy in the Scientific Revolution
The rise of modern mathematics: 1600-1700
• 1. Characters of seventeenth-century mathematics
• 2. The ‘language of Nature’
• 3. The collective dimension of science
• 4. The role of mathematics in the Scientific Revolution
Galilei and the geometry of accelerated motion
• 1. The two new sciences of Discourses. The science of motion
• 2. From overall speed to instantaneous speed
• 3. Evolution of the Galilean theory of accelerated motion
The innovations of Luca Valerio and Bonaventura Cavalieri
• 1. The Greek heritage and the work of Valerio and Cavalieri
• 2. Luca Valerio
• 3. Bonaventura Cavalieri
• 4. New wine in old wineskins
The development of the mathematics of Apollonius: Desargues, Pascal and conic sections
• 1. The works of Girard Desargues
• 2. The conics according to Desargues
• 3. The conics according to Blaise Pascal
• 4. Descartes, Desargues and Pascal
The rise of calculus of probability
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The rise of a new discipline
The Cartesian revolution and the developments of geometry
• 1. The Cartesian revolution
• 2. The Géométrie
• 3. The comments on Géométrie
From Géométrie to calculus: The problem of tangents and the origins of infinitesimal calculus
• 1. The geometry of curves
• 2. Fermat’s method of maxima and minima. Bribes and adequation
• 4. Descartes vs. Fermat
• 5. The problem of bribes between Géométrie and calculus
• 6. Differential calculus
• 7. The quadratures after Cavalieri
• 8. Newtonian calculus
• 9. The dispute over priority
• 10. Unicuique suum
Reception and early developments of infinitesimal calculus
• 1. The enigmatic take-off of Leibniz's calculus and the late appearance of Newton’s methods.
• 2. The challenges of the nineties and the success of differential calculus
• 3. Penetration and reception of infinitesimal analysis in Europe
Astronomy
• 1. Johannes Kepler.
• 2. Galileo Galilei.
• 3. From Kepler to Horrocks.
• 4. The debate on elliptical orbits.
• 5. New telescopic discoveries.
• 6. The Paris Académie des Sciences.
• 7. Flamsteed and Halley.
Motion and mechanics
• 1. Intellectual, institutional and social background.
• 2. Of pulleys, levers and inclined planes.
• 3. Hydrostatics and a mathematical science of motion.
• 4. The emergence of new mathematical sciences.
• 5. The mechanical philosophy and the impact laws.
• 6. Oscillations and vibrations.
• 7. Struggles with curvilinear motion.
• 8. A new world system.
• 9. Conservation principles and the new mathematics.
Optics
• 1. Kepler
• 2. Descartes
• 3. Thomas Hobbes and the emergence of a wave theory of light
• 4. Physical optics
• 5. Newton and colour
• 6. Huygens and the wave theory of light
Music
• 1. Music and the Cosmos
• 2. Matter and sound
• 3. The ear and the soul
The Newtonian synthesis
• 1. Newton’s major works
• 2. Method
• 3. Optics
• 4. I Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica
• 5. The Regulae philosophandi and the Scholium generale