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16
WILLIAM A. WALLACE
TO GALILEO
17
Dumbleton,10 and Swineshead.11 Thus the fourteenth-century Mertonians were definite contributors to the mathematical component that
made classical mechanics possible.
With regard to the second component, experimentation and
measurement, the historical origins are not so clear. Certainly the
role of late medieval Aristotelians in its development has not been
emphasized, and there has been a tendency to look elsewhere for its
historical antecedents. The remainder of this paper will address itself
to this problem of experimental origins, and will attempt to trace some
factors contributing to its solution that seem to derive from
Bradwardine and his successors. The thesis to be defended is that
such factors were present, and that at least they set the stage, or
established the climate of opinion, wherein experimentation would
be sought as a natural complement to the mathematical formulation
of laws of motion. Unlike the mathematical component, this experimental component (if one may call it such) was not clearly present in the
work of the Mertonians, but it did evolve gradually, over two
centuries, as their ideas came to be diffused on the Continent.
Why it was that a mathematical basis for seventeenth-century
mechanics was apparent to the Mertonians whereas an experimental
basis was not, poses an interesting question. The answer seems to lie
in a certain ambivalence that was latent within the Mertonian
analysis of motion. The tension that should have resulted from this
ambivalence was not sensed immediately; had it been, perhaps the
experimental component would have gotten off to as good a start as
the mathematical. Yet there is evidence for maintaining that this
latent tension did come to be recognized as the "calculatory" analyses
developed at Merton College were propagated in France, Italy, and
Spain during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The
tension was gradually resolved, and in its resolution the way was
prepared for an experimental investigation of nature that would
complement a mathematical formulation of its laws.
To argue the thesis, one must be more explicit about the
ambivalence present in the treatises of Bradwardine, Heytesbury, and
'?John Dumbleton wrote his Summa logicae et philosophiae naturalis (Sum of
Logic and Natural Philosophy) c. 1349, likewise at Merton College, Oxford. Part 3 is
concerned with De motu, and gives rules for calculating the velocity of local motion.
The work exists only in manuscript, and apart from the brief selection in Clagett (fn.
5), has never been edited or translated into English. Weisheipl analyzes portions of
it in his unpublished dissertation, "Early Fourteenth-Century Physics of the Merton
'School' with Special Reference to Dumbleton and Heytesbury" (Oxford, 1956).
"Richard Swineshead, not to be confused with John or Roger Swineshead.
Richard was likewise a fellow of Merton College; his Liber calculationum (Book of
Calculations) was composed c. 1350, and contains many rules for calculating the
velocities of motions. There are early printed editions of the work but no critical
edition or translation, apart from excerpts in Clagett (fn. 5).
18
WILLIAM A. WALLACE
TO GALILEO
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WILLIAM A. WALLACE
from some type of externally applied force. The rules they formulated
applied indifferently to both.
Despite the conceptual changes that these emphases implied,
however, the Mertonians continued to speak of motion as having causes
and effects. In fact, some writers have been intent on showing that
the distinction between dynamics, which ostensibly studies motion
from the point of view of the causes or factors producing it, and
kinematics, which studies motion in terms of its effects or its
spatiotemporal characteristics, was already known to the Oxford
school.'6 It is here that the ambivalence of the Mertonian position
lies. If motion is not something real, as Ockham himself was quick to
point out, then there is actually no point in seeking out its causes or
its effects.17 Causal terminology becomes meaningless in such a
context; a flatum vocis or an ens rationis is really no basis for
differentiating dynamics from kinematics. One may speak of a
ratio being the "cause" of another ratio, but what one really means
by this is that the ratios are functionally related. And, as the writings
of the Mertonians so abundantly show, their interest was ultimately in
kinematics. They discussed all types of imaginary motions generally
without reference to nature or even to artifacts; they spoke of abstractly
conceived and mathematicized motive powers and resistances and
examined every type of functionality to be found between them.18
This explains how they could lay the mathematical foundation on which
modern mechanics was to be based. But it also explains why they
failed to lay any foundation for the experimental component of this
science. The experimenter, according to the classical analysis at
least, attempts to cause motions, and to study the effects of what he
'6Crosby (fn. 3), 52-54, gives the evidence in support of this thesis, which he offers
as a mild corrective to Maier's analysis.
'7Thus Ockham rejected the motor causality principle, Omne quod movetur ab alio
movetur, as applying to local motion, precisely on the grounds that "local motion is
not a new effect"-Shapiro (fn. 12), 53.
'8Even a cursory examination of the Regule and the Liber calculationum will
show this. Wilson explains Heytesbury's frequent use of the phrase secundum
imaginationem and his abstract, logical treatment in the work cited (fn. 7), 25. Again,
as M. A. Hoskin and A. G. Molland point out in "Swineshead on Falling Bodies: An
Example of Fourteenth-Century Physics," The British Journal for the History of
Science, 3 (1966), 150-82, the author of the Liber calculationum uses impressive
mathematical techniques to reach a null result that, for him, justifies an Aristotelian
principle to which he already subscribes. They conclude: "The tractate therefore ends
with the frustrating spectacle of an author using sophisticated techniques of applied
mathematics in order to show that in the problem at issue mathematics is inapplicable"
(154). Yet, paradoxically, it was the very development of these "inapplicabletechniques"
that provided the mathematical apparatus earlier identified in this paper as a major
contribution of late medieval writers to the developing science of mechanics. Cf.
Wilson as cited toward the end of fn. 15 above.
MECHANICS
FROM BRADWARDINE
TO GALILEO
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WILLIAM A. WALLACE
measuredby the linear path traversedby the point which is in most rapid
26For Albert of Saxony, see his fourth question on the sixth book of the
Physics, (fn. 21), fol. 66va. Marsilius of Inghen gives a similar distinction in his fifth
question on the sixth book of the Physics, (fn. 5), fol. 68rb.
27For Albert of Saxony's difficulties, see my article cited at the end of fn. 15,
189. Maier gives a similar analysis of Marsilius of Inghen's apparently contradictory
position in her Zwischen Philosophie und Mechanik (fn. 24), 139-40, esp. fn. 100.
28For a complete analysis and documentation of the various examples used by
fourteenth- to sixteenth-century writers to illustrate the kinds of local motion
discussed by the Mertonians, see W. A. Wallace, "The Enigma of Domingo de Soto:
Uniformiter Difformis and Falling Bodies in Late Medieval Physics," Isis, 59 (1968),
384-401.
29A summary of Paul's teaching is contained in his Summa philosophiae naturalis
(Venice, 1503), which was widely used as a textbook.
30Gaetano's commentary is to be found in Heytesbury's Tractatus de sensu
composito et diviso, Regulae cum sophismatibus, Declaratio Gaetani supra easdem,
etc. (Venice, 1494).
MECHANICS
FROM BRADWARDINE
TO GALILEO
23
motion,if there is such a point. And accordingas the positionof this pointis
changeduniformlyor not uniformly,the completemotionof the whole bodyis
said to be uniformor difform.Thus, given a magnitudewhose most rapidly
movingpoint is moved uniformly,then, howevermuch the remainingpoints
may be moving non-uniformly,that magnitudeas a whole is said to be in
uniformmovement....3
The language, as is easily recognized, is that of kinematics. Heytesbury is talking of moving bodies and moving points, but these he
conceives very abstractly, and one is hard put to see how they apply
in any way to the order of nature.
Commenting on this section, however, Gaetano's imagination takes
a realistic and practical turn. To exemplify Heytesbury's reasoning he
proposes the case of a rotating wheel that expands and contracts during
its rotation.32 He talks also of a cutting edge placed against a wheel
that continually strips off its outermost surface.33 Another of his
examples is a wheel whose inner parts are expanding while its outer
surface is being cut off.34 Gaetano speaks too of a disk made of ice
rotating in a hot oven; here the outermost surface continually
disappears and the velocity at the circumference becomes slower and
slower, whereas the inner parts expand under the influence of heat and
their linear velocity increases.35 Yet another of his examples is a
wheel that rotates and has material gradually added to its circumference, as clay is added by a potter to the piece he is working. Here the
velocity of rotation would be uniform but the linear velocity of a point
on the circumference would increase, unless the entire wheel could be
made to contract in the process, in which case the linear velocity of the
outermost point might remain constant.36
These examples, it should be noted, are Gaetano's and not Heytesbury's.37 Heytesbury's kinematic doctrine is, of course, important,
3:Thetranslation is from Clagett (fn. 5), 235-36.
:2"Notandum quod illa conclusio habet veritatem primo propter corruptionem
punctorum extremorum, ut dicit magister [Hentisberus]. Secundo propter
condensationem forme circularis ab intra et rarefactionem ab intra. Tertio per condensationem ab intra et additionem ab extra. .."-ed. cit. (fn. 30), fol. 38rb.
33"Que conclusio declaratur sic. Ponatur gladius supra rotam ut prius et dolet
continue partem extremam rote. . ."-ibid.
34"Deinde volo quod quelibet pars citra ultimam remotam et dolatam rarefiat, ita
tamen quod non transeant magnitudinem dolatam. . ."-ibid.
'6"Que conclusio probatur sic. Ponatur quod una rota moveatur et continue in
superiori parte addantur alie partes sicut sit in rota figuli cui addiur glis
circumquamquesimul. ."--ibid., fol. 38va.
:70ne would not know this, unfortunately, from Wilson's explanation of
Heytesbury's teaching. He presents fifteenth-century examples as though these were
in the original fourteenth-centurytext; see the work cited (fn. 7), 117-28.
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WILLIAM A. WALLACE
for without it, Gaetano would have had no reason to seek its exemplification. But the examples furnished by Gaetano are important
too, for they show that Gaetano was convinced that Heytesbury's
doctrine could be applied to the real world, and in fact was thinking
of cases that were realizable in materials close at hand after the
fashion of the experimenter. Gaetano did not perform experiments
or measurements (at least as far as is known), but he took another
step closer to their realization. And he, like Paul of Venice, was
a realist, perhaps more in the Averroist than in the Scotist sense, but
nonetheless unwilling to accept fully the nominalist philosophy of
nature.38
TO GALILEO
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WILLIAM A. WALLACE
TO GALILEO
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WILLIAM A. WALLACE