Exercises on the Mechanical Problems of Aristotle, with an appended brief narrative of the author's life and writings

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Original title: Bernardini Baldi Vrbinatis Guastallæ abbatis In mechanica Aristotelis problemata exercitationes, adiecta svccincta narratione de autoris vita & scriptis A Latin humanist-scientific commentary that works through the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanica (the Quaestiones mechanicae) question by question. Rather than paraphrase or translate the text, Baldi re-founds each of its answers on Archimedean statics—the science of centres of gravity (centrobarica)—reducing every simple machine to the lever and the balance and confirming each solution by geometric demonstration. He argues that Aristotle's causal explanations failed because he lacked the concept of the centre of gravity. Treating mechanics as a facultas mediating between natural matter and geometric proof, Baldi engages problems such as the roundness of the balance, the power of the lever, the wheel paradox, projectile motion, rebound, and the river-whirlpool, grounding some arguments in his own observation of crossings of the Po and Adda. The volume includes an editorial apparatus, a mathematical appendix on the two mean proportionals (the Delian problem of duplicating the cube) tied to the scaling of artillery, and an appended biographical vita of the author. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
• View the original source file