The “Calculatores” in Early Sixteenth-century Physics*

E-ISSN： 1474-001x|4|3|221-232

ISSN： 0007-0874

Source： British Journal for the History of Science, Vol.4, Iss.3, 1969-06, pp. : 221-232

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to report some little-known aspects of sixteenth-century physics as these relate to the development of mechanics in the seventeenth century. The research herein reported grew out of a study on the mechanics of Domingo de Soto, a sixteenth-century Spanish scholastic,1 which has been concerned, in part, with examining critically Pierre Duhem's thesis that the English “Calculatores” of the fourteenth century were a primary source for Galileo's science.2 The conclusion to which this has come, thus far, is that Duhem had important insights into the late medieval preparation for the modern science of mechanics, but that he left out many of the steps. And the steps are important, whether one holds for a continuity theory or a discontinuity theory vis-à-vis the connection between late medieval and early modern science.