The Accademia del Cimento in the European Context (1657-2007)

MARCO BERETTA: Marco Beretta teaches history of science at the University of Bologna. He is the vice-director of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence and the editor of Nuncius – Journal of the History of Science. He has been working on the history of chemistry, with a special focus on Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. More recently, he has published on the scientific use of glass in ancient science and alchemy. He is presently working on a study devoted to Lucretius’ De rerum natura.

Lucretius as Hidden Auctoritas of the Cimento

The first edition of Lucretius’ De rerum natura to be published in Italy after the prohibitions against parts of the poems adopted by Catholic Church in Florence in 1517, was only in 1647 inFlorence. Its editor, Giovanni Nardi, was an Aristotelian physician but he had been regarded with a benevolent eye by both Galileo and Torricelli and his edition, heavily commented and anticipating the works on Epicurus by Pierre Gassendi, marked indeed an event with important cultural consequences.

The rediscovery of Lucretius in 17th-century Tuscany inspired the activities of some of the members of the Accademia del Cimento and provided the theoretical framework of several themes of investigation which were embodied in the agenda of the Academy. More, during the life of the Academy, the poem was translated into Italian by a pupil of Borelli, Alessandro Marchetti, who, together with Lorenzo Bellini and others naturalists, adopted qualitative atomism to investigate physical and biological phenomena.

Despite such a strong program of investigation, the name of Lucretius is rarely cited (never in the Saggi) in the scientific works by the members of the Academy.

DOMENICO BERTOLONI MELI: Domenico Bertoloni Meli teaches the history and philosophy of science at IndianaUniversity, Bloomington. He is the author of Equivalence and Priority (Oxford, 1993, 1997), Thinking with Objects (Baltimore, 2006), and editor of Marcello Malpighi Anatomist and Physicians (Florence, 1997).

A Lofty Mountain, Putrefying Flesh, Styptic Water, and Germinating Seeds:
Reflections on Experimental Procedures Around the CimentoAcademy

This paper examines the rise of the “parallel trial” as an experimental procedure in the second half of the 17th century. By “parallel trial” I mean the notion of performing two parallel experimental trials with minimal variations in order to weed out those events and phenomena naturally occurring in nature as opposed to those generated by the experimental setup. Although strictly speaking the experiments I discuss were not performed at the CimentoAcademy, they were in different forms associated with some of the themes and protagonists of the Academy.

I examine the Puy-de-Dome experiment by Blaise Pascal and his brother in law Florin Perier, whereby a “continuous experiment” was carried out at the foot of the mountain whilst Perier ascended it, in order to prove that the descent of the column of mercury carried to the top of the mountain was unequivocally due to the higher altitude; Francesco Redi’s experiences on spontaneous generation, in which he placed pieces of flesh in two containers, one covered and protected by flies and the other open, proving that putrefying flesh does not generate insects by itself; Redi’s experiments to test the properties of a styptic water coming from France that was advertised as a cure for dangerous arterial wounds, in which he compared its powers to the properties of standard water from a well; and Marcello Malpighi’s experiments to establish the role of cotyledons in the germination of seeds, whereby he argued against Giovanni Battista Trionfetti that growth is hindered or delayed by the removal of cotyledons compared to the case when the cotyledons are retained.

These cases range from the physico-mathematical disciplines to natural history and medicine, pointing to a growing methodological awareness about experimental procedures and to a concern about the natural variability of experimental results: the height of mercury in the barometers is not always constant, some arterial wounds heal without any intervention, etc. Together, they highlight a new awareness of the need to rule out competing explanations for experimental results. Thus the cases I examine represent an important chapter in the history and philosophy of experimentation, one that has surprisingly been left at the margins of current accounts of experimentation in the 17th century.

LUCIANO BOSCHIERO: Luciano Boschiero is Lecturer in History at Campion College, Australia. He is the author of several journal papers as well as the book: Experiment and Natural Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Tuscany: The History of the Accademia del Cimento (Springer: Dordrecht, 2007).

Networking and Experimental Rhetoric in Florence, Bologna, and London During the 1660s

During the 1660s, a correspondence network existed between members of the Royal Society of London, the Accademia della Traccia in Bologna and the Accademia del Cimento in Florence. The mutual admiration that these institutions purported to have for one another was based on their shared interests in experimental philosophy. But what exactly did it mean to practice experimental philosophy? Did conceptions of experimentalism differ in Florence, Bologna and London? And why did they see experimental philosophy as the key common point uniting them in a collaborative network? In this paper, I will attempt to address these questions as well as argue that experimental method, when treated as the epitome of reason and as the only means of producing reliable natural knowledge, became the basis for an inter-organizational method rhetoric found at the heart of this network. More specifically, the Italian societies, eager to make their mark with their highly-respected and admired colleagues in London, needed to appeal to the Londoners by using a persuasive rhetoric that eliminated any hint of the contentious natural philosophical debates occurring inside the institutions. So for these societies, separated by great distances and relying on their correspondence and published works to forge relationships, talk of an experimental method became a persuasive rhetorical tool effective across the continent.

ANTONIO CLERICUZIO: Antonio Clericuzio teaches History of Science at the University of Cassino. He was Frances A. Yates Fellow at the Warburg Institute, London from 1985 to 1989, and Research Fellow at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University College of London from 1989 to 1991.
He is the author of several articles on Robert Boyle’s chemistry and medicine; on corpuscular philosophy and chemistry; on Italian science in the 17th century. He authored the following books: Elements, Principles and Atoms. Chemistry and Corpuscular Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, Dordrecht: Kluwer; La Macchina del Mondo. Teorie e pratiche scientifiche dal Rinascimento a Newton, Roma: Carocci, 2005. He is the editor, with P.M. Rattansi, of Alchemy and Chemistry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994; with M. Hunter and L. Principe, TheCorrespondence of Robert Boyle, 6 vols, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001.

Chemistry in the Accademia del Cimento and in the Accademia degli Investiganti

Historians have paid little or no attention to the chemical research of the Accademia del Cimento. It would seem that the Saggi di naturali esperienze contain little evidence of the Academicians’ chemical work. Nonetheless, if we look at this work closely and pay attention to extant manuscripts, we see that the role played by chemistry was by no means negligible. In the first part of my paper I will focus on Borelli’s and Stensen’s chemical theories and experiments. Borelli’s chemical views are attested in his correspondence and his printed works, namely, Delle cagioni delle febbri maligne (1649) and in the account of the eruption of Etna (Istoria et meteorologia incendii Aetnaei, 1670). Borelli was not the only member of the Accademia who pursued chemical research. Niels Stensen, whose early chemical studies are well known, explained a number of geological phenomena in chemical terms and voiced his views in Canis Carchariae dissectum caput, published as an appendix to his famous Elementorum myologiae specimen (1667) –dedicated to Ferdinando II.

The role of chemistry in the Neapolitan Accademia degli Investiganti is now recognised by most historians. The relationships between the Cimento and the Investiganti are still to be explored. There is evidence that Borelli was personally acquainted with the Investiganti’s work, notably with their chemical research, as attested by his manuscript notes on the effluvia of the Agnano Lake. Borelli’s views on the Lake of Agnano will be examined in the context of the debate opposing the Investiganti to the Jesuits.

MARIA CONFORTI: Maria Conforti is Head Librarian of the Biblioteca di Storia della Medicina, Sapienza Università di Roma. She has worked on Italian intellectual and scientific history in the 17th–19th centuries. Her current research interests are focused on medical history in Italy –especially in Rome and Naples– in early modern age and on medical historiography.

The Experimenters’ Anatomy

The paper will take into account the anatomical researches and experiments carried out by natural philosophers such as Borelli, Oliva, Malpighi, Fracassati, Aubry, Finch, Redi, and Stensen, who were more or less loosely connected to the CimentoAcademy. While anatomical research apparently never became one of the central issues of the academic agenda, nevertheless many of its more influential members, prominently Borelli, did in fact consider this field the centre of their activity. The paper will examine the policy of chair distribution at Pisa medical Faculty, as well as the experiments carried out at the Medici court by Redi, in order to illustrate the tensions and the discrepancies between different models of zootomy, anatomy –and ultimately physiology, in the modern sense– which were proposed by the academicians and by their pupils, followers, and co-researchers. Some of the issues which will be considered involve the role played by Oliva and by his work on fluids, the experiments of chirurgiainfusoria at Pisa by Fracassati, and the emergence on the Italian scene of two altogether new meanings of the term anatomia: a strictly chemical one, and the anatomiasubtilis developed by Malpighi. It will be argued that while anatomy can be seen as an “eccentric” topic at the Cimento, its presence in the backstage was no minor factor in shaping the strategies of patronage and publication of the academicians. At the same time, Italian research in the field was dramatically changed in the “crucible” of the Cimento years.

MARIA PIA DONATO: After getting a PhD in Modern History at the Università di Bari she spent a year at the EHESS in Paris. She was then post-doc fellow at the Università della Basilicata, where she has been teaching for two years. In 2001 she was Frances Yates Fellow of the Warburg Institute and received a research grant from the Sapienza Universitàdi Roma. In 2003 she held a “Ville de Paris” scholarship at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, where she was professeur invité in 2004, as well as at the EHESS. She is currently research fellow at the Università di Cagliari.

From Florence to Rome: Academies of Natural Philosophy in the Second Half of the 17th Century

One of the main difficulties in interpreting the history of scientific academies in early modern Italy comes from considering them as institutions rather than as forms of sociability in the frame of the aristocratic society of ancien régime. In my paper I shall discuss the most recent historiography on early modern academies in order to reassess their nature and social dynamics. This is a necessary premise for inquiring into the scientific sociability in late 17th-century Rome.

In the second part of my paper I shall reconsider some of those Roman academies for medicine and natural philosophy which shared many debates with the Cimento; this was also because some leading figures of contemporary science converged to Rome, temporarily or permanently. Their networking deserves a closer look in order to trace the paths leading from Florence –and other Italian cities– to Rome. Yet, the activity of these academies should be considered in their ideological stance rather than in their scientific endeavours. Ideology, namely the claim for the legitimacy of a plurality of approaches to Nature, is the most evident common element among these academies, which are otherwise rather differing. Atomism shall prove a very useful viewpoint.

In the final part of my paper I shall suggest that continuity between the Cimento and Roman academies should be searched for in the medical and anatomical studies rather than in physics and natural philosophy. Nevertheless, the most successful merger of the Cimento’s and other philosophical traditions of the Moderns would be later made in a non-scientific academy in Rome, the Arcadia.

FEDERICA FAVINO: Federica Favino graduated in History and Philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome (1991). In 1996 she completed a PhD in Social History of Europe at the University of Naples Federico II. She was a fellow at the Istituto Universitario Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples, at Villa I Tatti–The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence (2004–2005) and at the Centre A. Koyré in Paris (2005–2007). She is currently collaborating with the History Department of the SapienzaUniversity. She has published several essays on Giovanni Battista Ciampoli, on the circulation of Galilean philosophy in the Papal Court, on the practice of experimental physics in 17th-century Rome and on science teaching at the University of Rome from the 16th to the 18th century.

Spontaneous Generations: An Unknown Contribution by Antonio Oliva

This paper intends to contribute to implement the dossier concerning the “accademie quercine” of September 1664, that is the experiments carried out and the debates held about the oak-apples insects within the CimentoAcademy and at the Grand Duke’s court. This paper aims to bring to light some letters hitherto unknown by Antonio Oliva concerning the oak-apples insects. Dated September–October 1664, these letters represent a part of a broader correspondence between Oliva, Francesco Redi and Lorenzo Magalotti. Together with some other papers and a copied fragment of the Academy’s Diario, probably owned by Carlo Dati, Oliva’s correspondence came into the library of the Chigi family and afterwards into the Vatican Library, where they still are. Published only in part, these documents offer an important contribution to the study of the CimentoAcademy in different respects. Philological: because they help us to integrate and to emend the academicians’ correspondence. Historical: because they shed new light on one of the most controversial figure of 17th-century Italian science –Antonio Oliva– and on his role inside the Academy. Unexpectedly, in fact, they also reveal the craft of a valuable painter…

MORDECHAI FEINGOLD: Mordechai Feingold is Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology. He is the co-editor of Perspectives on Science and editor of History of Universities. His publications include The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton’s Science and the Making of Modern Culture (2004) and The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England, 1560-1640. His current projects include a three-volume History of the Royal Society.

The Accademia del Cimento and the Royal Society

In his expansive assessment of the century of Louis XIV, Voltaire paid a subtle homage to the Accademia del Cimento. Descartes, he wrote, had succeeded in demolishing the chimeras of scholasticism –albeit by introducing new ones– and it was out of the ruins of both chimeras that reason ultimately emerged. By demonstrating that “it was not possible to comprehend any thing about the grand fabric of nature, but by examining her minutely,” the Cimento experimenters “performed signal services.” Voltaire proceeded to imply that the Royal Society had taken over from where the Cimento had left off; its members vastly expanded the boundaries of scientific knowledge as well as inspired the foundation of the Parisian Académie des Sciences. Voltaire was not alone in believing that the Florentine and London Academies pursued similar objectives by identical means. Nor was he alone in conferring priority to the Cimento over the Royal Society.

My paper attempts to consider afresh the complex relations between the two institutions, both real and imagined, and suggest a new framework within which to investigate early modern scientific societies more generally.

SUSANA GÓMEZ: Susana Gómez is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her research has been mainly focused on theories of matter, nature of light and experimental science in post-galilean science. Her publications include many articles on these issues and the book Le passioni degli atomi. Montanari e Rossetti: una polemica tra galileiani (1997). She is working on the transformation of the concept of representation in early modern science

Experiments and Thoughts on Light Around the CimentoAcademy

The second generation of Galileans, those who were involved in the intellectual venture of the Accademia del Cimento, faced up the risky task of giving an answer to many problems which Galileo himself had left open. Most of those questions were related to the matter theory, an epistemological, philosophical and even theological thorny issue in the Italian context of that period. The scientific optimism of this generation of Galileans was, most of the times, cautious and this prudent attitude found the experimental method optimum for showing without explicitly saying. The transmission of sound, the expansion of bodies or the barometric experiments, were inseparably tied up to the debate about atomism, a scientific proposal which in Italy was especially difficult to discuss openly. Among the questions Galileo had left open and which had gained relevance in the scientific European context, there was that one related to the nature of light. The Saggi included three apparently ingenuous and naive experiments about the effects of light. Nevertheless, besides their apparent ingenuity, each of these experiments was a hint of much more complex views and research about the nature of light carried out by Galileo and his followers. The specific design of experiments on light devised around the Accademia del Cimento helps us to understand their philosophical and scientific implications.

ROBERT A. HATCH: Bob Hatch teaches in the Program for the History of Science at the University of Florida, Department of History, and currently serves as the Interim Director of the Center for the Humanities. He has published a number of articles, essays, and chapters (particularly on Boulliau, Gassendi, and Peiresc), and as sequel to his first book, The Collection Boulliau (APS 1982), he is currently completing Part II of the trilogy, The Boulliau Correspondence, and continues apace with Part III, Boulliau’s Europe: Science & Learning in 17th-Century France. He is also writing a book on the Republic of Letters during the Scientific Revolution.

Boulliau’s Europe: The Accademia del Cimento and the Republic of Letters

Best known as an astronomer—an early Copernican and Keplerian—Ismaël Boulliau (1605–1694) orchestrated a vast correspondence network that found a place for the New Science in the Republic of Letters. As Pierre Daniel Huet opined, Boulliau was “placed in the very seat of learning”, someone who held, as Prince Leopold noted, “one of the principal posts” in the Republic of Letters.

The purpose of this contribution is two-fold; first, to provide a brief overview of the extensive epistolary exchanges between Prince Leopold and Boulliau, and second, to situate Boulliau’s relations with the Cimento in the broader context of the Republic of Letters. Given these objectives, I argue that Boulliau joined Leopold, in the wake of Galileo’s condemnation, in extending a new strategy for Italian science. The Cimento embodied two key objectives; first, to defend Galileo and justify his contributions; and second, to establish and extend a new kind of natural inquiry, a New Science that could weather difficult conditions in Italy while ensuring continued recognition, if not Italian supremacy, throughout Europe. The relationship between Leopold and Boulliau was a classic form of patronage. For Leopold, Boulliau offered expertise, experience, and access to the highest ranks of Parisian society and, more generally, to the learned world. Decades before the emergence of state-sponsored societies and scholarly journals, Boulliau’s vast correspondence network (which rivals the combined output of Mersenne and Oldenburg) represented an unrivalled opportunity for the Cimento to establish communications, to make contacts, and to encourage cooperation. Drawing on the large exchange of letters between Leopold and Boulliau (almost entirely unpublished) I sketch the inner workings of their relationship and link selected problems with Boulliau’s other correspondents, Viviani, Ricci, Burattini, Paolo del Buono, and others.

ROB ILIFFE: Rob Iliffe is Professor of Intellectual History and the History of Science at the University of Sussex. He has published a number of articles on history of science in early modern Europe, and has edited a collection of 18th century biographies of Newton. He recently wrote a short introduction to Newton’s life and work, and is currently Editorial Director of the online Newton Project, and Editor of the journal “History of Science”.

Scientific Styles, Mutual Attitudes, and Interactions Between Italian and English Natural Philosophers in the Late 17th Century

Recent histories of natural history and natural philosophy in early modern England and Italy have shown that in each place there were a number of different approaches to the study of nature. Dominant styles overlapped and changed over time: in the 16th century, a museological culture was powerful in many Italian states, while in the first half of the following century, Galileo’s momentous researches and discoveries built on and transformed a vibrant tradition of mixed mathematics. Later still, the anatomical work of Malpighi and others became widely known and respected across Europe. By the middle of the 17th century, English natural philosophers were beginning to promote an experimental approach that was inspired both by the methods and discoveries of Harvey, but also by the writings of Francis Bacon. Until the triumph of Newton in the 1690s, efforts to mathematise the natural world beyond the achievements of Galileo were viewed with suspicion, and were rejected in favour of a much more limited, empiricist natural history of facts of the sort advocated by the Royal Society. These programmes did not develop in isolation from each other, and there were many forms of interactions and avenues for contact.

In this paper I look at the cultural and intellectual contexts of the rich sets of relations that existed between Italian and English natural philosophers in the second half of the 17th century. Evidently, there was a powerful set of religious and cultural assumptions about their mutual research that coloured the reception of their foreign colleagues’ work. Via books, journal articles, letters and personal contact, natural philosophers in England and in the Italian states were aware of each other’s work, and to a certain extent, were able to give objective assessments of the data produced by their “opposite numbers”. Partly conditioned by deeply entrenched and sometimes negative cultural and religious attitudes, individuals and institutions sought nevertheless to create a European scientific project in which such attitudes had no place.

ALFONSO MIRTO: Alfonso Mirto’s main field of research is 16th-century history of culture, with a particular attention to book trade and the history of libraries. He is at present completing a research project on relationship between Florence, Amsterdam and Holland in the 16th century, promoted by the Dutch Institute of the History of Art in Florence. He is the author of a number of articles and essays, particularly on the relationship between Andreas Fries and Magliabechi, Pieter Blaeu and Florence, the Huguetans of Lyon and Florence. He is also editing the correspondence between European booksellers and printers and Antonio Magliabechi, as well as the correspondence between Alessandro Segni and the Accademia della Crusca.

Genesis and Fortuna of the Saggi di naturali esperienze (17th-19th Centuries)

My paper explores on the origins and publishing success of the Saggi di naturali esperienze, collected by Lorenzo Magalotti and first published in 1667.

It is well known that the idea of publishing the Saggi dates back to 1662, when each academician collaborated in drafting the minute with the Secretary. A number of reasons made the preparation of the book long and hard, even though in 1664 the manuscript got the imprimatur. When first published, the Saggi did not have a widespread circulation either in Italy or abroad. A reason of the difficulty of its circulation derived from the fact that only few copies were put on the market, while most of them were given by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici as gifts to princes, sovereigns and scholars. In spite of this, few years after its issue, Giovanni La Noù –the Dutch printer based in Venice– asked Antonio Magliabechi for a fair copy of the Saggi to be printed there. Although the project was not carried out, it testifies to the widespread knowledge which surrounded the book. The Saggi was reprinted in 1691; it had six editions and reprints in the 18th century and two in the 19th century. The first translation was into English in 1684; it was followed in 1731 by a Latin translation which served as the text for the French version (1755).

I shall conclude with the analysis and the comparison among the different editions and reprints published between 1667 and 1841.

STEFANIA MONTACUTELLI: She graduated in philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome and holds a PhD in European history (University of Basilicata, 2005). Her PhD thesis dealt with biographical recollections and routes of scientific communication. She attended several workshops and conferences devoted to the history of science. She is the author of the entry “Giovanni Alfonso Borelli” in the Diccionario Biográfio Español, Real Academia de la Historia di Madrid(2007) and of the essay Da Galileo a Borelli e oltre: la filosofia naturale delle Scuole Pie a Roma nel Seicento (in M.P. Donato ed., Scientific Culture in Eearly Modern Rome. Collected Essays, The Warburg Institute, in press). Her main field of research is the history of culture and scientific institutions, with a particular focus on 17th century and Galilean school.

Air “Particulae” and Mechanical Motions: From the Experiments of the Cimento to the Hypotheses on the Nature of Air by Borelli

The nine years Giovanni Alfonso Borelli spent at the Medici Court (1657–1666) where the most productive of his scientific career. He pursued astronomical and mathematical investigations and paid special attention to mechanics, namely to the force of percussion. This topic was a legacy of Galileo’s research on force, as contained in the New sciences. Borelli’s De vi percussionis (1667) and De motionibus naturalibus a gravitate pendentibus (1670) are the outcome of the research and experiments he carried out at the CimentoAcademy. In my paper I will focus on Borelli’s De motionibus naturalibus, notably on his mechanical theory of air.

In De motionibus (Prop. CXXIII), Borelli maintained: “confiteri tenemur aerem componi ex machinis flexibilibus, & resilientibus ad modum arcus” (we have to state that air is composed of flexible and elastic devices like bows). To him, the physical properties of air derive from the motions of its constituent particles, which he saw as particulaequantaeet figuratae.

Borelli’s view of air was linked to his matter theory, as well as to the description of the Academy’s experiments on the fistula torricelliana.

In his inquiry of the micro-mechanisms responsible for the physical properties of air, Borelli resorted to the oscillatory motions of the particles. He adopted oscillatory motions to account for planetary motion too. In his view, all natural phenomena, including breathing and the combination of air particles with blood, are produced by motions, which in turn are ruled by mechanical and geometrical laws.

LAWRENCE M. PRINCIPE: Lawrence M. Principe is Drew Professor of Humanities at JohnsHopkinsUniversity in the Departments of History of Science and Technology and of Chemistry. He is the author of The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest and co-author (with William R. Newman) of Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chemistry, winner of the 2005 Pfizer Prize. He is currently completing a study of chemistry at the Académie Royale des Sciences.

The Académie Royale des Sciences and Italian Scientific Societies

While the importance of scientific societies is well-established in the history of science, there remains more to be said about the connections and exchanges of savants and ideas between various societies, especially across the frontier of the Alps. French-Italian relations are especially rich in this regard. At the Académie Royale des Sciences, founded in 1666 in the last months of the Accademia del Cimento’s activity, there are the familiar examples of Adrien Auzout who left France for Italy, and of Gian Domenico Cassini who, some years later, moved in the opposite direction. The case of Wilhelm Homberg is less well-known. Homberg, eventually the chief chemist of the Académie, spent many of his intellectually formative years in Italy, associating for a time with the Accademia Fisicomatematica Romana and perhaps with other less formalized groups of virtuosi. In the course of his years of extensive travels, he transported both ideas and instruments in both directions across the Alps, including new designs for microscopes and air pumps, concepts on animal and plant generation, and much sought-after techniques for preparing the famous pietra bolognese to glow in the dark. Homberg’s case reveals features of the role of scientific societies as an international network of stations for itinerant natural philosophers, and the often invisible dynamics of intellectual exchange between such centers.

GIORGIO STRANO: Giorgio Strano is curator of the collections at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza of Florence. He is involved in the studies and popularization of the history of astronomy. He has published articles on Italian and international magazines. He has collaborated at the making of exhibitions on the history of astronomy and science.

Saturn’s Handles: Observations, Explanations and Censorship from Galileo to the Accademia del Cimento

Galileo Galilei’s use of the telescope as an astronomical instrument led to discover unsuspected features in the celestial bodies. In such an exploration, Galileo was assisted by his expectations. The concept of the terrestrial nature of the celestial bodies assisted him in seeing mountains on the Moon and clouds on the Sun. Moreover, the concept of the possibility that the celestial bodies may accomplish their revolutions around centres different than the Earth facilitate him to see the satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus. However, nothing else could assist Galileo and his followers in interpreting other problematic characteristics of the celestial bodies revealed for the first time by the telescope.

The case of Saturn is emblematic. The possibility that the planet was surrounded by a ring appeared extremely alien to early 17th-century observers. For this reason, everyone tried to interpret observational evidence in his own way: Galileo looking for satellites proving the Copernican theory, Honoré Fabri looking for satellites disconfirming such a theory, etc. By examining the over 40-year controversy about the true constitution of Saturn, historians meet a fertile field of studies on the interrelation between evidence, observational problems, theoretical prejudice, and interpretation. From this point of view, the experimental test performed by the Accademia del Cimento to decide about the true nature of Saturn is very intriguing. On the one hand, it was the attempt to confirm by a terrestrial experiment the structure of a celestial body. On the other hand, it was also the attempt to evaluate and overcome any material and mental conditioning in deciding about the nature of an item from its visual appearance. This second aspect of the test is particularly significant, since present reconstructions of the optical resolution of early telescopes confirm the “objectivity” of the early and even the most “fanciful” observers alike.

DAVID STURDY: David Sturdy is Professor Emeritus of the University of Ulster and Honorary Professor of History at the University of Hull. He has written on the Académie Royale des Sciences under the ancien régime and in collaboration with Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyère has completed a further work relating to the Académie Royale des Sciences: L’Enquête du Régent, 1715-1718, which will be published in 2007.

The Paris Académie Royale des Sciences and the Accademia del Cimento: An Institutional Comparison

This paper will focus on two related issues. In 1727 the French Académie Royale des Sciences, which since 1699 had published its annual Histoire et Mémoires as a record of its activities, decided to compile supplementary volumes covering the period 1666-1699. The Secretary of the Académie des Sciences, Fontenelle, undertook the task and in 1733 eleven such volumes were published. He introduced the first volume with his famous history of the foundation of the Académie, and in the course of his discussion he expressed observations on the origins of the Royal Society and the Accademia del Cimento. He used his interpretation of the Royal Society and the Cimento to sustain his wider thesis concerning the foundation and character of the Académie des Sciences. My paper will assess Fontenelle’s comments especially on the Accademia del Cimento as compared to the Académie Royale des Sciences.

Secondly, and bearing in mind Fontenelle’s version, the paper will examine links between members of the Cimento and the Académie Royale des Sciences (often those links were indirect) from a modern perspective, and will compare those two bodies as scientific institutions. The conclusion will consider the extent which the views of Fontenelle and those of the present day either complement each other or diverge.

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