“It Is Impossible to Deceive Nature”. Galileo’s Le mecaniche, a Bridge between the Science of Weights and the Modern Statics
It is impossible to deceive nature. This is Galileo’s warning against the “ignorant engineers” who were convinced that machines could overcome nature by undertaking impossible projects. In Le mecaniche the Pisan scientist shows that mechanical movements cannot happen against nature. In fact, machine...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
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Éditions Kimé
2017-02-01
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| Series: | Philosophia Scientiæ |
| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/1242 |
| Summary: | It is impossible to deceive nature. This is Galileo’s warning against the “ignorant engineers” who were convinced that machines could overcome nature by undertaking impossible projects. In Le mecaniche the Pisan scientist shows that mechanical movements cannot happen against nature. In fact, machines must obey some inviolable laws of nature like the compensation principle, which establishes a connection between the moving force and the moved resistance. This principle, formulated in terms of virtual movements, becomes the fundamental principle of a new approach, the dynamic one, by means of which Galileo constructs a new science of equilibrium, which shapes the first form of modern statics. |
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| ISSN: | 1281-2463 1775-4283 |