Descripción
Folio [29.4 x 19.6 cm], (8) ff. (the last blank), 130, (1) f. [colophon], 1 integral blank, with numerous woodcut diagrams and illustrations in text. Old ownership stamp "Darquier" neatly stenciled on title (the Toulousain astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix 1718-1802?) Bound in 18th century vellum over paste boards, covers a bit soiled and abraded. Inconsequential soiling and a little spotting to title; even toning to some quires, but generally a fresh and appealing copy. Rare first edition of the author s first work, generally regarded as the most important treatise on mechanics since Archimedes and a critical influence on Galileo. The work is notable for its commitment to establishing mechanics on a rigorously mathematical basis, for its powerful argument that mechanics and statics are separate sciences and for its insistence that mechanics should not consider abstract and/or abstruse entities but the activity of machines. Stillman Drake particularly emphasizes the importance of the section on pulleys, where Monte reduces them (as he does most other simple machines) to a lever. As such, the work has technological implications for navigation, manufacture, the plastic arts and medicine (f. 245)."From the time of its publication in 1577. [it was] the most authoritative treatise on statics to emerge since antiquity, and it remained pre-eminent until the appearance of Galileo s Two New Sciences in 1638. It marks the high point of the Archimedean revival of the Renaissance" (Rose, Italian Renaissance of Mathematics, p. 222).Monte (1545-1607) studied mathematics at Padua and subsequently at Urbino, where he studied with Commandino, editing and publishing the latter s translation of Pappus. He conducted an extensive scientific correspondence with Galileo, securing for the Florentine his chairs at Pisa and later at Padua.* Adams U-7; Riccardi II.178; P.L. Rose, DSB IX.487-89, & The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics, pp. 222ff.; Biblioteca Mechanica, pp. 228-9. N° de ref. del artículo 3605
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