Lot 670
Piccolomini, Alessandro
Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographss | 10 May 2007
Description
In mechanicas quaestiones Aristotelis. Venice: Trianus Curtius, 1565, 8vo, woodcut device on title, woodcut initials, diagrams in the text, contemporary limp vellum, a few leaves lightly damp-stained
Footnote
Note: Adams P1115
Second edition of this paraphrase and commentary by Alessandro Piccolomini of a work attributed at that stage to Aristotle, it contains an important early formulation of the theory of impetus.It was first published in 1547. It is accompanied by his essay “De certitudine mathematicarum disciplinarum .” Piccolomini was the first to compose an extended commentary on the Questions of mechanics. “The most interesting section is a discussion of the conflicting doctrines of antiperistatis and impetus with regard to the problems of projectile motion and acceleration of free fall. Piccolomini’s account shows the degree to which even an orthodox Aristotelian was aware by the mid-sixteenth century of the difficulties in this matter” (Drake & Drabkin, Mechanics in sixteenth-century Italy, p.51).