Infinite Degrees of Speed-Libre PDF

Infinite Degrees of Speed: Marin Mersenne and the Debate over Galileo's Law of Free Fall
Author(s): Carla Rita Palmerino

Source: Early Science and Medicine, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1999), pp. 269-328
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INFINITE DEGREES OF SPEED
MARIN MERSENNE AND THE DEBATE OVER
GALILEO'S LAW OF FREE FALL
CARLA RITA PALMERINO
University of Nijmegen*
Introduction
In
1634, Marin
Mersenne
published
a short
pamphlet
entitled
Traite
des
mouvemens,
et de
la
cheute des
corps pesans
in which he
pre-
sented the results he had obtained when
measuring
the natural
acceleration of
falling
bodies. After
years
of stubborn adherence
to the idea that free fall had to take
place
with uniform
speed,
the
evidence of accurate
experiments
had
finally persuaded
the Minim
to
accept
the
validity
of the law of acceleration which Galileo had
proposed
in his
Dialogo sopra
i massimi sistemi.'
Measuring
the times
used
up by
a leaden ball
falling
from
heights
of
147, 108,
and 48
feet,
respectively,
Mersenne had
persuaded
himself that "the
speed
of this ball increases in the
duplicate
ratio of the
spaces
that it
*
Research for this article was made
possible through
the financial
support
of
the Netherlands
Organization
for Scientific Research
(NWO), grant
200-22-295.
I
wish to thank Peter
Damerow, Peter
Dear,
Cees
Leijenhorst, Sophie
Roux, and
the Editors of this
Journal
for their useful comments on earlier drafts of this
paper.
NB: The abbreviations used in this article refer to the
following
texts:
C.M.=
Correspondance
du
P. Marin
Mersenne,
religieux
minime,
ed. C. De
Waard,
R.
Pintard,
B.
Rochot,
A.
Beaulieu,
17 vols.
(Paris, 1945-1988).
A.T.= Oeuvres de
Descartes, ed. C. Adam and P.
Tannery,
13 vols.
(Paris,
1897-
1913).
G.G.= Le
Opere
di Galileo
Galilei (Edizione Nazionale),
ed. A.
Favaro, 20 vols.
(Florence, 1890-1909).
P.G.= Petri Gassendi
Opera
Omnia,
6 vols.
(Lyon, 1658).
In letters written between 1628 and 1631, Mersenne
repeatedly expressed
his conviction that bodies fell with uniform motion.
Despite
the fact that this
hy-
pothesis
had been refuted
by Cornier, (Cornier
to
Mersenne, 29 March
1628,
C.M., 2:
52),
Descartes
(Descartes
to
Mersenne,
18 December
1629, A.T.,
1:
94;
C.M.,
2:
344)
and Beeckman
(Beeckman
to Mersenne, 30
April
1630, C.M., 2:
457), Mersenne continued to
express
his
support
for it in 1631
(Mersenne
to
Rey,
1
September 1631, C.M.,
3:
188).
Mersenne's
position
is summarized and criti-
cized
by
Beeckman in
Journal
tenu
par
Isaac Beeckman de 1604 a'
1634,
ed. C. De
Waard,
4 vols.
(The
Hague, 1939-1953),
3: 181-182
(December 1630).
? Koninklijke
Brill
NV, Leiden, 1999
Early
Science and Medicine
4,
4
270 CARLA RITA PALMERINO
traverses in
falling,
and hence that the
spaces grow
in the
dupli-
cate ratio of the times."2
But
although
this ratio of acceleration
corresponded
to Galileo's
law,
the numerical data
presented
in the
Dialogo
turned out to be
quite
inaccurate. Mersenne therefore decided to
publish
a
Traite
so as to
present
his
"experiences veritables."3
After
instructing
his readers in the art of
calculating
the time
employed by
a
falling body
if the
height
is
known,
and of
finding
its initial
height
if the time of its fall is
given,
Mersenne devotes
the last
pages
of his treatise to the
possible
causes
responsible
for
the fall of bodies.
Although
he
manages
to think of three such
causes-"positive
and real
heaviness";
the
pressure
of the air on
the
falling object;
and terrestrial attraction-he
rejects
them all for
different reasons: the first
appears
to be
incompatible
with the
possibility
of
acceleration;
the second
implies
that bodies of differ-
ent
weights
will fall with different
speeds;
and the third entails that
the
degree
of acceleration should be weaker at
greater
distances
from the earth.4
With his tables of
experimental
results,
Mersenne
managed
to
correct,
it is
true,
Galileo's
approximate
data. But he did not suc-
ceed in
filling
an essential lacuna of the
Dialogo: "gravity,"
which
in the Galilean
vocabulary
had remained an undefined
term,
was
doomed to remain so even for Mersenne. His treatise ends in fact
with the resolve to be content with a
description
of natural
phe-
nomena and to do without
knowledge
of the
underlying
causes
and
principles.
If one believes that free fall
depends
on the attraction or
magnetic
force of
the earth,
one can
say
that
falling
bodies
keep
a
geometrical proportion,
all
the more as the
activity
of all sorts of natural
agents
diminishes with the
squares
of
spaces.
But I have no doubt that one can invent various other
reasons to
explain
the
proportion
maintained in the
speed
of free fall,
2 M. Mersenne, Traite
des mouvemens,
et de
la
cheute des
corps pesans
et de
la
pro-
portion
de leurs
difffrentes
vitesses
(Paris, 1633),
2: "[...]
la vitesse de ceste bale
s'augmente
en raison
doubl&e
des
espaces qu'elle
fait en
descendant, et
consequemment [...]
les
espaces
croissent en raison
doubl6e
des
temps."
'
On the
subject
of Mersenne's mistrust of Galileo's
experimental
assertions,
cf. A.
Koyre,
"An
experiment
in measurement,"
Proceedings of
the
American
Philo-
sophical Society,
97
(1953), 222-237;
P.
Dear,
Mersenne and the
Learning of
the
Schools,
(Ithaca, 1988), 136-137; Id.,
Discipline
&
Experience:
the Mathematical
Way
in the
Scientific
Revolution
(Chicago, 1995),
129-132. For an
analysis
of the
Traite
des
mouvemens,
cf. also P.
Boutroux,
"Le Pire Mersenne et
Galil6e," Scientia 31
(1922),
279-290 and
347-360,
esp.
347-350.
Cf.
Mersenne,
TraitS,
21-23.
INFINITE DEGREES OF SPEED 271
though
it is
maybe
not less difficult to find its true cause than it is to dem-
onstrate whether the earth is stable or mobile. That is
why
it is sufficient to
explain
the
phenomena
of nature, since the human
spirit
is not
capable
of
possessing
its causes and
principles.5
Mersenne's
scepticism,
which in these lines still
appears
"miti-
gated" by
his faith in the
experimentally
ascertained
fact,
was in
the course of time to
give way
to a radical sense of
pessimism
in
relation to the
possibility
of
constructing
an exact science of mo-
tion. The
analysis
of the fall of bodies
(de
casu
gravium)
offered in
the Novarum
observationum
... tomus III of 1647
betrays clearly
Mersenne's recent conviction that the mathematical
description
of
the
phenomenon
of free fall and the
analysis
of its
physical
causes
cannot be
separated.
The Galilean law of odd
numbers,
which
Mersenne
presented
in 1634 as the
only
rule in
conformity
with
the observed
phenomena,
is
depicted
in 1647 as
merely
one of the
possible
laws. And
although
Mersenne still admits that bodies
dropped
from modest altitudes
appear
to confirm the law formu-
lated
by
Galileo,
he now insists that our
ignorance
of the true
cause of acceleration does not allow us to eliminate
any
of the
rival
conceptions:
You see therefore that of these descents of bodies, which are
commonly
called
heavy
bodies,
nothing deeper
can be demonstrated as
long
as the
principle,
or the true and immediate
cause,
is unknown for which such or
such bodies
begin
their
way
towards the
center,
and how much
they
are
aided or
impeded
in this
way by
all other bodies
they
meet or which sur-
round them.6
Peter Dear has formulated an
interesting hypothesis
to account for
what he calls Mersenne's
"change
of
perspective
from
pragmatic
5
Ibid.,
24: "Si
l'on tient
que
la cheute
depend
de
l'attraction, ou de la vertu
magnetique
de
la terre, I'on peut
dire
que
les
corps qui
tombent
gardent
la
pro-
portion geometrique,
d'autant
que l'activit6
de toutes sortes
d'agens
naturels se
diminfie en raison
doubl6e
des
espaces:
mais
je
ne doute
pas que
l'on ne
puisse
inventer
plusieurs
autres raisons de la
proportion que gardent
les cheutes dans
leur
vistesse,
quoy qu'il
ne soit
peut
estre
pas moins
difficile d'en trouver la
vraye
cause
que
de demonstrer si la terre est stable ou mobile. C'est
pourquoy
il suffit
d'expliquer
les
phenomenes
de la
nature,
puisque l'esprit
humain n'est
pas
ca-
pable
d'en
posseder
les causes et les
principes."
6 M.
Mersenne, Novarum
observationum
physico-mathematicarum
... tomus
III,
(Paris, 1647)
133: "Vides
igitur
de his casibus
corporum, quae vulgo gravia
dicuntur,
nihil
penitus
demonstrari
posse
donec innotescat
principium,
seu vera
et immediata causa ob
quam
versus centrum haec et
illa
corpora
suum iter
instituant,
quantumque
iuventur aut
impediantur
in toto itinere
ab omnibus aliis
corporibus
occurrentibus aut circumstantibus."
adoption
to
principled rejection"
of Galileo's law.'
According
to
Dear,
Mersenne's
gradual estrangement
from the
original
Galilean
position
was
probably
influenced
by
his
reading
of three
works,
published
between 1644 and
1646,
in which the
validity
of the odd-
number law was
disputed.
These were Descartes'
Principia philo-
sophiae (1644),
which
strongly emphasized
"the
dependence
of
free fall on the nature of
underlying physical
causes,'"8
and two
important
treatises
by
Fabri and
Baliani,
both
published
in
1646,
in which Galileo's
interpretation
of acceleration as a continuous
process
was called into
question.9
These works could not have
failed to undermine Mersenne's
original
"ambition to
push
for-
ward a
mathematically
certified kind of natural
philosophy."'0
Now,
it is
undoubtedly
true that
Descartes, Fabri,
and Baliani all
tried to refute the Galilean law of acceleration on the basis of
physical
considerations. But it is
equally
true
that,
at the same
time,
there was an author much
appreciated by
Mersenne who
pursued exactly
the
contrary
aim,
that
is,
to
prove
the
validity
of
Galileo's law
by physical
means. This author was Pierre
Gassendi,
who between 1640 and 1646 wrote six Latin
epistles
in which he
attempted
to
provide
the Galilean science of motion with a new
ontological
and causal foundation.
One is thus forced to ask
why
Mersenne was more
strongly
im-
pressed by
the
physical
reasons
speaking against
the Galilean law
than
by
those in its favor. Dear claims that the decisive factor was
Mersenne's
recognition
that Descartes had
managed
to show that
there was at least one
"ingenious
and
plausible physical explana-
tion of
gravity
that defied
any
neat mathematical
analysis
but un-
doubtedly compromised hopes
of
portraying
Galileo's work as
genuinely
demonstrative."" This
explanation appears
to me too
weak. As I shall
try
to show in the
following,
Mersenne's eventual
scepticism
was not due to the fact that Descartes had
managed
to
produce
a
"possible" explanation
of
gravity,"
but instead to the
fact that he had formulated
objections
to Galileo's
theory
of accel-
eration which
appeared
to Mersenne valid
irrespective
of the valid-
ity
of the Cartesian
explanation.
A
comparison
of Mersenne's
7
Dear, Mersenne,
215.
8
Ibid., 217.
9 Ibid., 215-216.
10
Ibid., 211.
"
Ibid.,
218.
12
Ibid.
Novarum observationum tomus III
(1647)
with his Traite' des mouvemens
(1634) conveys
the
impression
that their author had moved from
the
original
conviction that there existed
many "possible"
causal
explanations
of
gravity compatible
with Galileo's law to the con-
clusion that there existed
only
one
explanation-from
innate
grav-
ity-which
could, however,
not be verified.
The
following pages
will be dedicated to a demonstration of how
Mersenne
began
to doubt the
validity
of the odd-number law as
soon as he became aware of the
problematic
nature of a funda-
mental
principle
of Galileo's kinematics. The
principle
in
question
is formulated both in the
Dialogo
and in the Discorsi and states that
a
falling body, dropped
from a
position
of
rest,
has to
pass through
"infinite
degrees
of slowness."
Mersenne,
who was at first
quite
willing
to
accept
the
validity
of this
assumption
and in fact even
tried to furnish a demonstration of its
truth,
was later
persuaded,
in
particular by
Descartes,
that it was
incompatible
with
any strictly
mechanistic
explanation
of
gravity.'"
For if one
accepted
the idea
that bodies did not descend downward because of some intrinsic
property,
but thanks to the action of an external
force,
one was
forced to admit that
they
had to start
moving
with a finite
speed
and could not accelerate
beyond
a certain
point.
And this
meant,
in other
words,
that
they
could not accelerate
according
to the
odd-number ratio.
My presentation
of Mersenne's
long-standing
involvement with
this issue will
proceed chronologically
and will
include,
under the
various
subheadings,
detailed discussions of the authors with
whom Mersenne stood in an
epistolary exchange
and of the cru-
cial texts that influenced him. This
procedure
allows us to broaden
the
perspective beyond
the
figure
of Mersenne and trace the
fortuna
of the Galilean law of free fall in the middle of the seven-
teenth
century.
1s Although
Dear
recognizes (ibid., 219)
that the denial of the
passage
of the
body through
infinite
degrees
of
speed
was a crucial
part
of
Fabri's,
Baliani's and
Descartes's
respective
theories of fall, he tends to exclude the
possibility
that
Mersenne's doubts
concerning
the
validity
of the odd-number law could "arise
from a
rejection
of the mathematical
concept
of a
body passing successively
through
all
degrees
of
speed
from rest"
(ibid., 211).
Mersenne's initial adherence to the Galilean
position
We have said in the Introduction that Mersenne became
only
con-
vinced of the odd-number law once he had carried out the exact
measurements described in his Traite' of 1634. Yet it would be false
to believe that his faith in
experimental
data was unlimited even
then. For
already
in a
passage
in the
Harmonie
universelle to which
Peter Dear has drawn
attention,
Mersenne
compares
Galileo's law
of free fall with that of Gottfried Wendelin and
points
out that for
small
distances,
the difference between the two laws is so small as
to
defy experimental
verification.'"
And he therefore concludes
that "it doesn't suffice that three or four
experiments
in a row
succeed to make a
principle
out of
them."'5 Precisely
because he
was convinced that
experiments
alone could not
"generate
a sci-
ence,"16
he
sought
in his
Harmonie
to
develop
mathematical
argu-
ments in favor of the Galilean law. And
precisely
in this context
we
may
observe that he attaches
great importance
to the demon-
stration that bodies in free fall or
descending along
inclined
planes pass through
infinite
degrees
of
speed.
The
hypothesis
that a
heavy body
that
begins
to descend from
an
original position
of rest has to
pass through
infinite
degrees
of
speed
had been formulated in the first
day
of the
Dialogo by
Salviati
who had tried to
prove
it
by
means of two
propositions.'7
The first
of
them,
which was
presented
as an undemonstrated
truth,
stated
that "the
degree
of
velocity acquired
at a
given point
of the in-
clined
plane
is
equal
to the
velocity
of the
body falling along
the
perpendicular
to its
point
of intersection with a
parallel
to the
horizon
through
the
given point
of the inclined
plane."'8
In other
terms,
the final
speeds
reached
by
two bodies
descending along
the inclined
planes
CA and DA
(1)
are identical to the two final
'4
Dear,
Discipline,
132.
15
M.
Mersenne, Harmonie universelle contenant la theorie et
la
pratique
de la
musique,
2 vols., (Paris, 1636-1637),
and facsimile
reprint
of author's annotated
copy (Paris, 1963),
1: 126. The first volume of the Harmonie
universelle,
where this
passage
is to be found,
was
already printed
in
1633, cf. R.
Lenoble, Mersenne ou
la
naissance du
micanisme
(Paris, 1643),
XXI-XXV.
16 Ibid., 112.
17 For a discussion of this
proof,
cf. also M.
Clavelin, La
philosophie
naturelle de
Galilee.
Essai sur les
origines
et la
formation
de la
mechanique classique (Paris,
1996
[1968]),
287-290.
18
G.
Galilei,
Dialogue Concerning
the Two
Chief
World
Systems,
tr. S. Drake, 2d
ed.
(Berkeley, 1967),
28
(=G.G.,
7:
52).
7c
Fig.
1:
G.G.,
7:
51
speeds
reached
by
two bodies in free fall
down the verticals CB and
DB,
respec-
tively.
The second
proposition
established
that "in the
ordinary
course of
nature,
a
body
with all external and accidental im-
pediments
removed travels
along
an in-
clined
plane
with
greater
and
greater
slowness
according
as the in-
clination is
less,
until the slowness
finally
comes to be
infinite,
when the inclination ends
by
coincidence with the horizontal
plane.""9
This
implies
that one could
choose,
on the line
CB,
a
point
so close to B "that if we were to draw a
plane
from it to the
point
A,
the ball would not
pass
over it even in a whole
year."
The
truth of these two
propositions necessarily
entailed,
in the
eyes
of
Salviati,
that a
falling body starting
from rest
passes through
all the infinite
grada-
tions of
slowness;
and that
consequently
in order to
acquire
a determinate
degree
of
velocity
it must first move a
very great
distance and take a
very
long
time.20
The link between the
premises
and the conclusion is constituted
by
a number of
steps
that Salviati fails to
explain:
1)
An
infinity
of inclined
planes
can be traced between the line
CB and the
point
A.
2)
Among
these inclined
planes,
there exist no two
planes
at
whose end the
descending body
would have reached the
same
degree
of
speed.
3)
To each of the infinite
degrees
of
speed
reached at the end
of the descent
along
one of the infinite inclined
planes
traced "above the horizon AD"
corresponds
a certain
degree
of
speed through
which the
moving body
must
pass
at some
point during
its fall from C to B.
While
going through
his
demonstration,
Salviati declares that the
speed
of free fall
grows
in a continuous
manner,
but he does not
indicate the law
according
to which it does so. It is
only
in the
second
day
of the
Dialogo
that he reveals that "the acceleration of
straight
motion in
heavy
bodies
proceeds according
to the odd
'9 Ibid.
20
Ibid.
numbers
beginning
from one
[...]
which is the same as to
say
that
the
spaces passed
over are to each other as the
squares
of the
times."2'
Salviati first
explains
this
hypothesis
in arithmetical terms
and then
goes
on to invoke
geometrical
means which alone in his
eyes
seems to be able to describe the
continuity
of acceleration
(cf.
fig. 2):
N~ A
a-------
Fig.
2:
G.G.,
7:
255
But since the acceleration is made
continuously
from moment to
moment,
and not
discretely
from one time to
another,
and the
point
A is assumed as
the instant of minimum
speed (that
is the state of rest and the first instant
of the
subsequent
time
AD),
it is obvious that before the
degree
of
speed
was
acquired
in the time
AD,
infinite others of lesser and lesser
degree
have
been
passed through.
These were achieved
during
the infinite instants that
there are in the time DA
corresponding
to the infinite
points
on the line
DA
[...].
Thus we
may
understand that whatever
space
is traversed
by
the
moving body
with a motion which
begins
from rest and continues
uniformly
accelerating,
it has consumed and made use of infinite
degrees
of increas-
ing speed corresponding
to the infinite lines
which,
starting
from the
point
A,
are understood as drawn
parallel
to the line HD and to
IE, KF, LG, and
BC,
the motion
being
continued as
long
as
you please.22
Figure
2,
which serves to illustrate the
passage just quoted,
shows
the
triangle
of
velocity
ABC inscribed in a
rectangle.
Salviati em-
ploys
this construction to show the so-called double distance rule
which establishes that a
body
in uniform rectilinear motion
passes
in a
given
time twice the distance traversed in the same time
by
a
body
in
uniformly
accelerated motion whose final
speed
is identi-
cal to the
speed
of the uniform motion of the first
body.
The dem-
onstration
produced by
Salviati is based on a
comparison
between
the surface of the
triangle
ABC,
which
represents
the sum of the
infinite
degrees
of
speed
of the accelerated
motion,
and that of
the
parallelogram
AMBC,
which
represents
"the total
[or
better:
the
mass]
and
aggregate
of
just
as
many degrees
of
speed
but with
each one of them
equal
to the maximum BC." But since the sur-
face of the
rectangle
is twice that of the
triangle,
it seems "reason-
able and
probable"
that a
body "making
use of the uniform veloci-
ties
corresponding
to the
parallelogram
[...]
would
pass
with uni-
form motion
during
the same time
through
double the
space
which it
passed
with the accelerated motion.""23
Salviati
presents
his conclusion as "reasonable and
probable"
and not as
"certain,"
because he
perceives
a
difficulty
in the identi-
21 Ibid., 222
(=G.G.,
7:
249).
22 Ibid., 228-229
(=G.G.,
7:
255).
23 Ibid., 229
(=G.G.,
7:
256).
fication of the areas with the distances covered.24 It was in direct
response
to this
difficulty
that Galileo later
decided,
in the
Discorsi,
to
represent
the
space
traversed in free fall
by
means of a
straight
line outside of the
triangular
area,
thus
leaving
to the latter the
task of
representing
the
aggregate
of the infinite
degrees
of veloc-
ity
traversed
by
the
falling body.25
A first mention of the notion of infinite
degrees
of
speed
occurs
in the
Mechaniques
de
Galilee
of
1634,
in which Mersenne finds an
occasion to
slip
in some
personal
"considerations
regarding
mo-
tions" which are
quite evidently
stimulated
by
his
reading
of the
Dialogo.
"A
falling body,"
he
writes,
"not
only
moves more
slowly
at
the
beginning
of its
motion,
but it also
passes through
all the
pos-
sible
degrees
of
slowness."26
While this
assumption
occurs in the
M&chaniques
in a
purely
ca-
sual
manner,
the
Harmonie
universelle of 1636
betrays already
the
author's
growing
awareness that it
requires
a demonstration.
Mersenne here
employs,
albeit in inverted
sequence,
the two
pas-
sages
of the
Dialogo
summarized above. In the second
proposition
of its second
book,
which is dedicated to the mouvemens de toutes
sortes de
corps,
Mersenne tries to
prove
that
if a
heavy body,
after
traversing
a
given space [in
a
given
time],
did not fur-
ther
augment
the
speed
it had
acquired
at the last
point
of this
space
and
instead continued at the same
speed,
it would in an
equal
time cover a
space
twice as
big
as the first
space.
From this one
may
infer that the
falling
stone
passes through
all
possible degrees
of
speed.27
In order to demonstrate the theorem of the double
distance,
Mersenne uses
figure
3,
whose
upper part reproduces
the
diagram
printed
in the
Dialogo.
And in his
paraphrase
of Galileo's
words,
Mersenne
points
out that since the
speed
of a
body
-G
10
Fig.
3:
Mersenne,
Harmonie
universelle,
1: 89
24 Concerning
the
problematic
identification of
aggregates
of
speed
and
spaces
in the
Dialogo,
cf. M.
Blay
and E. Festa, "Mouvement, continu et
composi-
tion des vitesses au XVIIe
siecle,"
Archives Internationales
d'Histoire
des
Sciences,
48
(1998), 65-118,
esp.
75-76.
25
Cf.
P.
Damerow,
G.
Freudenthal, P. Mc
Laughlin
and
J.
Renn ,
Exploring
the
Limits
of
Preclassical Mechanics
(New York, 1992), 229-230.
26 M.
Mersenne,
Les
Mechaniques
de
Galilie,
mathematicien et
ingenieur
du Duc de
Florence avec
plusieurs
additions rares et nouvelles
(Paris, 1634), 77-78; critical edition
by
B. Rochot
(Paris, 1966),
71.
27 Mersenne, Harmonie universelle,
1: 89:
"[...]
si un
grave
estant
tomb6
d'un
espace
donne
n'augmentoit plus la
vitesse
qu'il
a
acquise
au dernier
point
de cet
espace,
et
qu'il
continuait dans la mesme
vitesse,
il feroit un
espace
double du
premier
en un
temps egal:
d'oi l'on infere
que la pierre qui
descend
passe par
tous les
degrez possibles
de tardivete."
grows continuously
from one moment to the
other,
and not
through pauses
or
jumps
from one time to the
other,
it is certain that the
degrees
of
speed
[acquired]
between the condition of rest A and the
acquisition
of the de-
gree
HD in the time interval AD are
infinite,
according
to the
infinity
of the
instants of time AD or the
points
of the line
AD.28
Without
showing
the
slightest
awareness of Galileo's own
concep-
tual
difficulties,
Mersenne
explicitly
identifies the area of the tri-
angle
ABC,
which is constituted
by
the sum of the infinite
degrees
of
speed
of accelerated
motion,
with the
space
covered
by
the
body
in free fall.29 His
reasoning thereby
assumes the air of a certain
proof
and not
just
of a
probable argument,
as in the case of
Galileo's
Dialogo.
First,
he
compares
the surfaces of the
triangles
AHD, AIE, AKF, etc.,
deducing
that the
spaces
traversed
by
the
falling body
are
proportional
to the
squares
of times
elapsed.
Then
he
compares
the area of the
triangle
ABC with that of the
paral-
lelogram
BCNO,
concluding
that the
degree
of
speed
BC reached
at the end of the time AC would be sufficient for a
body
moved
with a uniform
speed
to
cover,
in a time CO
equal
to
AC,
a
space
BCNO twice as
large
as ABC.30 After
having repeated
the same
argument
in arithmetical terms-"to the
advantage
of those who
do not know
geometry"-Mersenne
concludes
by arguing
that the
speed
of
falling
bodies
grows just
in the same manner as
time,
for
if after half a second the
speed
is
6,
at the end of one second it will be
12,
and at the end of one second and a half
18,
and so on
[...].
From this we
can see that when we
approach
ever more
closely
the
beginning
of the
fall,
we can find such a
great
slowness of motion that a
body
that was to continue
its fall with
just
that
speed,
would not be able to cover a
space
of one line in
a thousand
years:
so that one can
say
that the
body begins
its fall with an
almost infinite
slowness;
and that
[the
state
of]
rest can be considered com-
pletely
infinite
slowness,
of which more will be said later.3'
28
Ibid.:
"[...]
croist continuellement de moment en
moment,
et non
par
pauses,
ou sauts,
de certain
temps
en certain
temps,
il est certain
que
les
degrez
de vitesse
depuis
le
repos
A
iusques
aI
l'acquisition
du
degre
HD dans le
temps
AD sont infinis, suivant
I'infinite
des instans du
temps
AD,
ou des
points
de la
ligne
AD."
29 A. Nardi has shown that not
only
Mersenne, but also Descartes and
Christiaan
Huygens
identified "without
difficulty
areas and distances."
They
did
not
experience
Galileo's discomfort
(more
visible in the Discorsi than in the
Dialogo).
Cf. A.
Nardi,
"La
quadratura
della
velocitY:
Galileo, Mersenne,
la
tradizione," Nuncius, 3,
fasc.
2, (1988), 27-64,
esp.
29,
61. For an
analysis
of the
demonstration of the double distance rule in the
Harmonie,
cf. also
id.,
"Spazi
del
moto in divina
proporzione,"
Giornale
critico della
filosofia
italiana,
LXIII
(1984),
334-376,
esp.
343-344.
30
Mersenne,
Harmonie universelle,
1: 90.
31 Ibid., 1: 91: "[...] que la vitesse des mobiles ne
s'augmente qu'en
la mesme
An occasion for
returning
to the same
argument
was offered
by
the demonstration of
proposition
VII whose aim was indeed "to
explain
the motions of
weights
on inclined
plains,
to
give
the
pro-
portion
of their
speeds,
and to determine if the
falling weight
passes through
all
possible degrees
of
speed.""2
Mersenne refers
here once more to the
Dialogo, mentioning
that
according
to
Galileo, a)
two
weights, beginning
from an identical
position,
and
one
descending along
an inclined
plane
and the other
falling
ver-
tically
downward,
will have identical
"impetuosity"
at
points
that
are
equally
close to the center of the
earth;
and
b)
that the times
of a
perpendicular
descent stand to the times of
oblique
descent
in the same relation as the
perpendicular
to the
oblique,
and that
(cf. fig.
3)
the time of fall for AC stands to the time of fall
along
AB as the root of the
space
AC stands to the root of the
space
AB.
Aware of the fact that such conclusions were based on
undemonstrable
principles,
Mersenne tried to
subject
them to an
empirical process
of verification
by measuring
the times of fall
along planes
of different
lengths
and
angles
of inclination. But the
results he obtained were
highly unsatisfactory,
for it was
"very
dif-
ficult to
perceive
which of two balls lands
first,
when the first de-
scends
perpendicularly
and the second
along
an inclined
plane."33
Nonetheless,
of one
thing
Mersenne seems to have remained con-
vinced: acceleration
required
the
passing through
infinite
degrees
of
speed. Upon
the
hypothesis
that a
body descending along
the
inclined
plane
BA
(fig. 4)
arrives at A with a
speed
sufficient to
cross 30 feet in 100
years
and that it reaches the same
speed by
descending vertically
from B to
C,
Mersenne claimed that it fol-
lowed that
faion des
temps,
car si
apres
une demie seconde la
vistesse est comme 6, a la fin
d'une seconde elle sera comme 12, & 'a la fin d'une seconde & demie elle sera
comme 18, &c
[...].
Par oii
l'on
void
qu'en approchant toujours
du commence-
ment de
la cheute, I'on
peut
rencontrer une si
grande tardivet6
de
mouvement,
que
le mobile ne feroit
pas l'espace
d'une
ligne
en
mille ans,
s'il continuoit 'a
descendre de la mesme vitesse: de sorte
que
l'on
peut
dire
qu'il
commence sa
cheute
par
une tardivete
quasi infinie,
et
que
le
repos peut
estre considere
comme une tardivete entierement
infinie, dont nous
parlerons
encore
apres."
32 Ibid., 108-112, here 108:
"expliquer
les mouvements des
poids
sur les
plans
inclinez A
l'horizon,
avec la
proportion
de leurs vitesses;
et determiner si le
poids,
qui
tombe,
passe par
tous les
degrez possibles
de
tardivet6."
ss Ibid., 112:
"[...]
tres-difficile
d'appercevoir lequel
tombe le
premier
des
deux boulets, dont l'un tombe
perpendiculairement,
et I'autre sur le
plan
incline."
A4,
c
Fig.
4:
Mersenne,
Harmonie
universelle,
1:
110
it
passes through
all the
degrees
of slowness before
acquiring
a certain de-
gree
of
speed, given
that one can incline the
plane
AB even less: and even
if one takes the
speed
of the
body
at
point
E
(which
I
suppose
to be 3
/4
feet
away
from
B,
for BE is
equal
to
/4
of
BA)
the
body
would
only
traverse BE in
50
years
and 15 feet in 100
years
if it continued to move with this
speed,
which would also diminish the
speed
of the
perpendicular
fall BC in the
same
proportion.34
As becomes obvious in a
passage
of the Nouvelles
pensees
de Galime
(1639),
which constitutes a free
synthesis
of Galileo's Discorsi
intorno a due nuove
scienze,
Mersenne believed to have
furnished,
in the lines
just quoted,
a
proof
of the
theory
of infinite
degrees
of
speed.
For at the
beginning
of book IV of the Nouvelles
pensees,
which treats of the fall of bodies toward the center of the
earth,
the Minim
explains
that a
naturally
accelerated motion is one in
which
equal
increases in
speed
are
acquired
in
equal
times;
And since there is an
infinity
of instants in
every part
of
time,
one will en-
counter ever
bigger degrees
of slowness
up
to
infinity
as one
approaches
ever more
closely
the
point
of rest from which the
moving body begins
to
descend,
in such a manner that if a stone did not increase the
speed
it had
acquired
in a certain
time,
it would not even traverse the
length
of one foot
in a
year,
as I have shown in the seventh
proposition
of the second book on
movements.35
In their critical edition of the Nouvelles
pensees,
Costabel and
Lerner
point
out that Mersenne here echoes an
argument
used in
the Discorsi
by Sagredo
when
trying
to demonstrate
through
nu-
merical
examples
a truth at which human
imagination usually
"4
Ibid.,
110: "il
passe par
tous les
degrez
de
tardivete,
avant
que
d'avoir
acquis
un certain
degre
de
vitesse,
attendu
que
l'on
peut
ancor
moins
incliner le
plan
AB: et mesme si l'on
prend
la
vitesse du mobile
lorsqu'il
est en
E,
que je suppose
eloigne
de B de trois
pieds
3/4,
car BE est le
quart
de
BA,
il ne fera BE
qu'en
50
ans, et ne fera
que
15
pieds
en cent ans s'il continue dans cette mesme vitesse,
laquelle
fera aussi diminuer la vitesse de la cheute
perpendiculaire
BC en mesme
proportion."
35
M.
Mersenne,
Les Nouvelles
pensees
de
Galile,
mathematicien et
ingenieur
du Duc
de Florence...traduit d'italien en
Franpais (Paris, 1639),
critical ed. P. Costabel and
M.-P.
Lerner, 2 vols.
(Paris, 1973),
1: 182: "Et comme il
y
a une infinite d'instans
en
chaque partie
de
temps,
l'on
peut
en remontant vers le
repos
d'oii
le mobile
commence
'
descendre, trouver des tardivetez
tousjours plus grandes jusqu'9
l'infiny,
de maniere
que
si une
pierre n'augmentoit point
la vitesse
acquise
dans
un certain
temps,
elle ne descendroit
pas
la
longueur
d'un
pied
dans un
an,
comme
j'ay demonstr6
dans la
septiesme proposition
du second Livre des
Mouvemens." On Mersenne's
paraphrasis
of the
Discorsi,
cf.
Boutroux,
Le
pire,
354-355; Lenoble, Mersenne, XXVI;
J.
Bernhardt, "Mersenne,
commentateur de
Galilee,"
Revue d'Histoire des
Sciences,
28
(1975), 169-177;
W.R.
Shea, "Marin
Mersenne: Galileo's <<traduttore-traditore>>," Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia
della Scienza di
Firenze, 2
(1977), 55-70; Dear, Mersenne, 208-209.
balked,
i.e. that the motion of fall
begins
with an
extremely
slow
speed.36 Evidently,
the Minim felt that he had to
reproduce
also
Salviati's demonstration which was based on the observation that
the force of
percussion
of a
falling body
decreases with the dimi-
nution of the
height
from which the
body
is
dropped.
But note
that Mersenne summarizes Salviati's
argument
but
cursorily
and in
fact criticizes Galileo for not
having
taken the
pains
of
seeking
the
"true reason" behind natural acceleration. Not without some de-
gree
of
presumption,
Mersenne refers those who would wish to fill
the Galilean lacuna to the nineteenth
proposition
of book III of
his own treatise.
The reader who checks this reference will find that this
propo-
sition is dedicated to the
explanation
of "various
peculiarities
of
bodies which fall downward and of the
speed
of their
fall.""'
In the
second
corollary,
Mersenne makes use of the double distance rule
in order to show that if internal
gravity
adds to
falling
bodies a new
degree
of
speed
in each moment of time it
augments
"their
speed
in the
duplicate
ratio of the
times."38
But Mersenne's
explanation
ends on a note that will leave all those who
hoped
to find there
"the true reason" of the motion of fall
quite disappointed:
"One
can
adapt
this
reasoning
to the attraction of the earth or to the
desire and
propensity
of bodies to
join
the rest of their
kin.""39
The
self-confidence
displayed by
Mersenne in the
pages
of his
Nouvelles
pensees
was therefore not due to his belief to have found
the one true cause of free
fall,
but instead to his conviction that
there existed several
causes,
acting
from within or without the fall-
ing body,
that would
produce
an acceleration
according
to the
odd-number law. But note that it was
precisely
with
regard
to this
last
point
that Mersenne was to
change
his mind. We shall see in
the course of the
following pages
how he
gradually persuaded
him-
self of the
categorical
difference in the effect
produced, respec-
tively, by
internal or external forces. In
fact,
the conclusion he was
to
espouse
towards the end of his life was that
only
a force
acting
36
Mersenne,
Les Nouvelles
pensees,
2: 248-249.
7
Mersenne,
Harmonie
universelle,
1: 205.
38 Ibid., 208. For an analysis of Mersenne's
reasoning,
cf. the critical edition of
the Nouvelles
pensees,
2: 250.
s9 Mersenne, Harmonie
universelle,
1: 208: "L'on
peut
accommoder ce raison-
nement A
l'attraction
de
la terre,
ou au
desir,
&
'
la
propension qu'ont
les
corps
de se reunir avec leur tout." For an account of Mersenne's
hypotheses
concern-
ing
the cause of
gravity,
cf.
Lenoble, Mersenne,
471-474.
from within and
conferring upon
the
body
"in each moment a
new
degree
of motion" was
capable
of
augmenting
"its
speed
in the
duplicate
ratio of the times" and could
bring
about a
passage
of
the
body through
infinite
degrees
of
speed.
The
impact of
Descartes
The
importance
of Descartes'
Principia philosophiae (1644)
for
Mersenne's
change
of mind on the
subject
of free fall has been
discussed
by
Peter
Dear,
who
rightly
states that before the
publica-
tion
date of that
work,
Mersenne "had
only
a
sketchy knowledge
of Descartes's account of
gravity."40
And
yet,
when we take a closer
look at the
correspondence
between the two
philosophers,
we find
that
though
Descartes
gives away
but few details of his own vortex
theory
of
gravity,
he is
quite
clear and
specific
about the
objections
he levels
against
Galileo's
theory
of acceleration. Let us therefore
return to the
beginning
of their discussion of this
phenomenon.
In the fall of
1629,
that
is,
even before Galileo had
published
the results of his research on the motion of free
fall,
Mersenne
submitted to Descartes a
question concerning
the
respective
times
of oscillation of
pendula
of various
lengths.
As he was not
fully
persuaded by
the answer he
received,
he
encouraged
his interlocu-
tor to
explain
the "foundations" of his view.
Descartes,
who had
just begun
to
compose
Le
Monde,
thereupon
decided to reveal to
the Minim his
hypothesis concerning
the acceleration of
falling
bodies which he had elaborated some
years
earlier in the course
of a
stimulating exchange
of views with Isaac Beeckman. In a let-
ter of November
13, 1629,
he
explained
to Mersenne that he was
of the
belief, first,
"that a
movement,
once it is
impressed
on some
body,
remains there
perpetually,
as
long
as it is not
impeded by
some other
cause,"
and hence that "what has once
begun
to move
in a vacuum will
always
move at an
equal speed."41
Now,
upon
the
assumption
that a
body falling
from A to C
(fig. 5)
received from
gravity
"in
single
moments new forces towards its descent" and that
at the same time it conserved the
impetus
it received in all
pre-
ceding
moments,
one could conclude that it traversed the
space
AB in a
period
of time thrice as
long
as that
required
to traverse
BC:
40
Dear, Mersenne,
p.
217.
41
A.T., 1:
72; C.M.,
2: 316.
But the
proportion according
to which this
speed
increases is demonstrated
in the
triangle
ABCDE, where the first line denotes the force of the
speed
impressed
in the first
moment,
the second line the force
impressed
in the
second
moment, the third line the third force, and so forth. Hence we
get
the
triangle
ACD which
represents
the increase of the
speed
of the down-
ward motion of the
weight
from A to
C,
and ABE which
represents
the in-
crease of the
speed
in the first half of the
space
which the
weight
traverses.
We also
get
the
trapezium
BCDE which
represents
the increase of the
speed
A's
'a
4
'I
LP
3 r
C
t1,,*
Ia0
Fig.
5:
A.T.,
1: 72
in the second half
[...], namely
BC. And as the tra-
pezium
BCDE is three times
larger
than the tri-
angle
ABE-which is obvious -, it follows that the
weight
will fall three times more
quickly
from B to
C than from A to B. In other words, if it needs
three moments to
pass
from A to B, it will
pass
from B to C in a
single moment.42
Though
from the initial lines of this
pas-
sage
it
might appear
as if Descartes as-
sumed that the
falling body
received from
gravity
a new "vis celeritatis" in
every
suc-
cessive moment of
time,
his
figure repre-
sents a motion in which the
velocity grows
proportionally
to
space.43
For the cathetus
42
A.
T.,
1:
72-73; C.M.,
2: 317:
"Qua
autem
proportione augeatur
ista
celeritas,
demonstratur in
triangulo
ABCDE:
nempe prima
linea denotat vim celeritatis
impressam 10 momento, 2a linea vim
impressam 2' momento,
3a vim
3' inditam,
et sic
consequenter.
Unde fit
triangulus
ACD
qui repraesentat augmentum
celeritatis motus in descensu
ponderis
ab A
usque
ad
C,
& ABE
qui repraesentat
augmentum
celeritatis in
priori
media
parte spatii quod pondus percurrit,
&
trapetium
BCDE
quod repraesentat augmentum
celeritatis in
posteriori
media
parte [...] nempe
BC. Et cum
trapezium
BCDE sit
triplo
maius
triangula
ABE, ut
patet,
inde
sequitur pondus triplo
celerius descensurum a B ad C
quam
ab A ad
B: id est si tribus momentis descendit ab A ad
B, unico momento descendet a B
ad C."
4
Damerow, Freudenthal,
Mc
Laughlin
and Renn have
pointed
out that
Descartes tends to oscillate between a
spatial
and a
temporal interpretation
of the
term "minimum."
Against
the view of those
who,
beginning
with
Koyre,
attributed
to Descartes the fixed idea that the
speed
of fall
grew proportionally
with
space,
these authors show that Descartes
maintained,
in the
paper
he drafted in 1618
in
response
to Beeckman's
inquiry,
that
equal
minima of force were added to the
body
in successive discrete minima of time and that therefore minima of motion
increased in arithmetic
progression.
It was
only
in
subsequent
documents that we
find the shift from a
spatial interpretation
of the minimum to a
temporal
one.
According
to these
authors, "the
implicit inconsistency
of the
spatial
and
tempo-
ral
interpretations
of minimum results
necessarily
from the
application
of the
given conceptual
framework to a new area of
investigation." (Damerow
et
al.,
Exploring, 25-26).
Descartes'
analysis
seems in fact to
agree
with the medieval
theory
of
configurations
of
qualities
and motions, where
"applied
to the exten-
sion
[line
AC in
Fig. 5] [the]
minimum is
[...]
indifferent to a
temporal
or
spa-
tial
interpretation." (Ibid., 25).
AC
designates
the distance traversed
by
the
falling body,
while the
areas ABE and BCDE indicate the increase of
speed, respectively,
in the first and second halves of this distance.
By applying
the
medieval
theory
of
proportions according
to which "for
equal
spaces
velocities are
inversely proportional
to times
elapsed,"
Descartes arrives at the conclusion that the time
required
to cross
the distance AB is three times
longer
than the time
required
for
BC.44
When,
in the summer of
1634,
Descartes held for the first time
a
copy
of Galileo's
Dialogo
in his
hands,
he did not notice that the
theory
of acceleration contained in it was
incompatible
with the
one he had offered in his letter of
1629,
for it defined
speed
as
proportional
to time rather than to
space.
In another letter to
Mersenne,
he wrote in fact that he had found in the
Dialogo
some of
my thoughts [...]
which I think I have once communicated to
you.
The first of them is that the
spaces
traversed
by heavy
bodies when descend-
ing
stand to one another as the
squares
of the times
they
take to descend,
that is to
say
that if a ball takes three moments to descend from A to
B,
it
will
only
take one moment to continue from B to
C, etc.
[cf.
fig. 6].
This I
said
[was true]
with
many
restrictions,
for it is never
entirely
true in the
way
in which
[Galileo]
thinks it can be demonstrated.45
A
B -
C
Fig.
6:
A.T.,
1: 304
The nature of these "restrictions" had been
explained by
Descartes a few
years
earlier.
In a letter of
June,
1631,
he had asked Mer-
senne to
ignore
the
explanation
of accelera-
tion he had offered in his letter of Novem-
ber, 1629,
as it relied on two
completely
erro-
neous
assumptions.
The first was that the
motion of fall occurred in an
absolutely
void
space,
while the second was that the
velocity
of the movement of fall was "at the first in-
stant the slowest that can be
imagined
and that it increases
always
uniformly
thereafter.""46 Descartes had meanwhile come to believe
44 Ibid., 31.
45
Descartes to Mersenne,
14
August
1634, A.T.,
1:
304-5; C.M.,
4: 298:
"[...]
quelques
vnes des mes
pens6es [...] queje pense
vous auoir autrefois escrites. La
premiere
est
que
les
espaces par
ou
passent
les cors
pesans quand
ilz
descendent,
sont les vns aus autres comme les
quarres
des tems
qu'ils employent
a
descendre,
c'est a dire
que
si vne bale
employe
trois momens a descendre
depuis
A
iusques
a
B,
elle
n'en
employera qu'vn
a le continuer de B
iusques
a
C, etc.,
ce
que
ie
disois auec
beaucoup
de restrictions,
car en effect il
n'est
iamais entierement
vray
comme il
pense
le demonstrer."
46
Descartes to
Mersenne,
13
January
1631, C.M.,
3: 23. In
A.T.,
1:
222,
the
same letter
figures
with the date of October, 1631.
that "the true
proportion defining
the increase of the
speed
of a
weight descending through
air" could
only
be
given
once the na-
ture of
gravity
had been determined.
But
then,
it was
precisely
as he initiated his
attempts
to
develop
his own
physical explanation
of the motion of fall that Descartes
understood how difficult it was to arrive at a
universally
valid law
of acceleration. In a letter to
Mersenne,
written toward the end of
1632,
Descartes stated that
according
to the
principles
of his own
natural
philosophy,
the
respective speeds
of two
falling globes
of
lead,
weighing
one
pound
the first and hundred
pounds
the sec-
ond,
should stand in a different ratio
than,
say,
the
speeds
of two
wooden balls of one and hundred
pounds,
or of two leaden balls
of two and two hundred
pounds, respectively.47
As the editors of
the Mersenne
Correspondence point
out,
this was the result of
Descartes' notion that terrestrial bodies were
predominantly
made
up
of
particles
of the third element with a
varying quantity
of
subtle matter
interspersed
in their
pores.
Since,
according
to the
theory developed
in Le
Monde,
terrestrial bodies were
pressed
to-
wards the earth
by
the vortices of subtle
matter,
and since these
vortices exercised their
push only
on the
particles
of the third
type,
the
physical make-up
of a
body
became
obviously
a decisive
factor in
determining
its
acceleration.48
But as Mersenne was in 1632 not
yet acquainted
with the
physi-
cal
theory
of acceleration that Descartes was at the time elaborat-
ing
for his Le
Monde,
he
may
have
thought
that the letter of his
interlocutor referred
merely
to the different
degrees
of resistance
offered
by
the air to
falling
bodies of diverse
shape
and
weight.
Such a resistance
was,
after
all,
also admitted
by
Galileo,
though
the
latter,
in contradistinction to
Descartes,
regarded
it as a mere
accident one could abstract from.
At the time when Mersenne wrote his
pages
on the motion of
falling
bodies
analyzed
in our
preceding
section,
he could thus
have
grasped only partially
the reasons behind Descartes' declara-
tion that
Galileo's
odd-number law was
unacceptable.49
Some
ad-
47 A.T., 1:
261; C.M.,
3: 344-345.
48 C.M.,
3: 347.
49
In a letter sent to Mersenne
probably
in
1635,
Descartes alluded to his
numerous reasons for
believing
that Galileo's law of acceleration was
false, but
he limited his discussion to the resistance of air: "Car cette
proportion
d'augmentation
selon les nombres
impairs
1, 3, 5,
7
etc.,
qui
est dans
Galilee,
et
queje croy
vous avoir escritte
autrefois,
ne
peut
estre
vraye
,
commeje pense
vous
ditional
years
were
necessary
for him to understand
fully
what
Descartes had tried to
express
when he
wrote,
in his letter of
June
1631,
that the
velocity
of fall was neither the smallest conceivable
at its
very beginning
nor that it
grew
in a continuous manner. The
first extant letter in which Descartes offers Mersenne an
explana-
tion of his own
theory
of
weight
carries in fact
only
the date of
June
19,
1639:
-
-.-
-..
C
?
C
Ao
D
,
----,. _
Fig.
7:
A.T., 2: 565
Regarding
what
you
wrote to me about the
problem
of
weight,
the stone C
is
pushed
in a circle
by
the subtle matter and hence towards the center of
the
earth;
but the first
[circular]
motion cannot be
perceived,
because it is
shared
by
the entire earth and the
surrounding
air,
so that we are left with
the second
[centripetal
motion]
as a cause of
weight.
And this stone moves
more
quickly
toward the end of its fall than at the
beginning, though
it is
pushed
less
forcefully by
the subtle matter: for it retains the
impetuosity
of
its
precedent
motion,
and whatever the action of the subtle matter adds to
it leads to its increase.50
But if
heavy
bodies fall downward as an effect of the
push
of subtle
matter,
it follows that their motion should
obey
two
general
laws
governing
collision. The first establishes that "if one
body
moves
another,
it must lose as much of its movement as it
gives
to the
other.""51
According
to the
second,
"the
larger
the bodies
are,
the
avoir aussi mande
alors,
qu'en supposant
deux ou trois choses
qui
sont fausses.
Dont l'une est
que
le mouvement croisse
par degrez depuis
le
plus
lent ainsi
que
juge
Galilee, et I'autre
que
la
resistance de
l'air
n'empesche point.
Et cette
derniere cause
peut
faire
que
les cors
qui
descendent,
estant
parvenus
a certain
degre
de vitesse ne
l'augmentent plus
et ceux
qui
sont de matiere fort
legere,
parviennent plus
tost a ce
degre
de vitesse
que
les autres."
(C.M.,
5:
581).
Inci-
dentally,
this remarkable
passage
flies in the face of Descartes' usual denial of
Beeckman's idea that due to the resistance of the air the motion of the
falling
body
reaches a certain
punctum aequalitatis
in cadendo. On Descartes'
disagreement
with
Beeckman, cf.
Damerow et
al.,
Exploring,
41 and Lenoble, Mersenne, 468,
where the relevant
passages
are cited.
Incidentally,
Lenoble offers a detailed ac-
count of Mersenne's
changing
views on the existence of a
in
cadendo,
cf.
ibid.,
468-470.
5o
A.
T., 2: 565; C.M.,
8: 454-455: "Touchant ce
que
vous m'escrivez de
la
pesanteur, la
pierre
C est
poussee
en rond
par la
matiere subtile,
& avec cela vers
le centre de la
terre;
mais le
premier
est
insensible,
a cause
qu'il
est commun a
toute
la terre,
& a l'air
qui
l'environne,
si bien
qu'il
ne reste
que
le second
qui
fait la
pesanteur.
Et cete
pierre
se meut
plus
vite vers
la
fin de sa descente
qu'au
commencement, bien
qu'elle
soit
poussee moins
fort
par la
matiere subtile: car
elle retient
l'impetuosite
de
son mouvement
precedent,
& ce
que l'action
de cete
matiere subtile
y
adiouste
l'augmente."
For a clear account of Descartes'
theory
of
gravity,
cf.
E.J.
Aiton,
The Vortex
Theory of Planetary
Motions
(London, 1972), 55;
R.J.
Overmann,
Theories
of Gravity
in the Seventeenth
Century (Ph.D. thesis,
Indiana
University, 1974),
80-104.
51 Descartes to Mersenne, 28 October,
1640
(A.T.,
3:
211; C.M.,
10:
173):
"si
slower
they
should move when
pushed by
the same
force."52
When viewed in the
light
of these two
premises,
Descartes' ear-
lier criticism of the Galilean
theory
of acceleration
finally
had to
acquire
a new
meaning
for Mersenne. For
assuming
that
heavy
bodies were
pushed
downward
by
subtle matter
(or by
some other
force
acting by contact),
it was
necessary
to
conclude,
first of
all,
that
they
could not
pass through
infinite
degrees
of
speed
but had
to
begin
their motion with a determined
degree
of
speed.
The
principle
of the conservation of the
quantity
of motion
implied
that the loss of motion on the
part
of the
moving body
was
being
compensated instantaneously by
an
equal acquisition
of motion on
the
part
of the
body
moved. From the same
principle,
one could
have derived also another
consequence, namely
that bodies of dif-
ferent sizes accelerated
differently,
as Descartes
pointed
out to
Mersenne in November
13,
1639:
I believe that in the
void,
if one such could
exist, the smallest force could
move the
largest
bodies
just
like the
smallest,
but not with the same
speed.
For the same force would make a
body
with twice the size move half as fast
as that of the
simple
size.53
un cors en meut un
autre,
il doit
perdre
autant de son mouvement
qu'il
lui en
donne." In a letter of
April
30, 1639,
sent to De Beaune
by way
of
Mersenne,
Descartes derives the same law from the
principle
of the
constancy
of the
quan-
tity
of mouvement in created matter:
"Premierement,
ie tiens
qu'il y
a une
certaine
Quantite
de mouvement en toute la Matiere
crete,
qui n'augmente, ny
ne diminuE
iamais;
et
ainsi,
que,
lors
qu'un corps
en fait mouvoir un
autre,
il
perd
autant de son mouvement
qu'il luy
en donne."
(A.T.,
1:
543; C.M.,
8:
421).
This law is
presented
as the third law of nature in the
Principia
(A.T., 8/1: 65)
and as the second law in Le Monde
(A. T.,
11:
41).
On these laws of
motion, cf. D.
Garber, Descartes'
Metaphysical Physics (Chicago, 1992), 197-231;
D. Des
Chene,
Physiologia:
Natural
Philosophy
in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian
Thought (Ithaca,
1995), 272-312;
M.
Blay,
"Les
regles
cartisiennes
de la science du mouvement
dans Le Monde ou traits de la lumiere,"
Revue d'Histoire des Sciences 51
(1985),
319-
346.
52
Descartes to
Mersenne, 25 December, 1639
(A. T.,
2: 627; C.M.,8: 696): "plus
les
corps
sont
grands, plus
ilz doibuent aller
lentement,
lorsqu'ilz
sont
poussez
par
une mesme force." This
law, too,
had been formulated in Descartes' letter to
De Beaune of
April,
1639: "Et
pour
ce
que,
si deux cors
inegaux regoivent
autant
de mouvement
I'un
que
l'autre, cette
pareille quantit6
de mouvement ne donne
pas
tant de vitesse au
plus grand qu'au plus petit,
on
peut
dire,
en ce
sens,
que
plus
un cors contient de
matiere,
plus
il a d'inertie
naturelle;
a
quoy
on
peut
adjouter qu'un
cors
qui
est
grand, peut
mieux transferer son mouvement aux
autres
cors,
qu'un petit,
et
qu'il peut moins
estre mfi
par
eux. De
faeon qu'il y
a
une sorte
d'inertie,
qui depend
de la
quantite
de la
matiere,
et une autre
qui
depend
de
l'estenduE de ses
superficies." (A.T., 2: 543-544; C.M.,
8:
421).
3
A.T., 2: 623; C.M.,
8: 611:
"Ie croy
bien
que
dans le
Vuide,
s'il estoit
pos-
sible, la
moindre force
pourroit
mouvoir les
plus grands
cors, aussi bien
que
les
plus petits,
mais non de mesme vitesse. Car la mesme force feroit mouvoir une
It
is, however,
not "the same force" to exercize its
power
on bod-
ies of different
sizes,
as we
gather reading
Le Monde and the
Principia.
In both treatises it is stated
clearly
that the volume of
subtle matter
pushing
a
heavy body
towards the center of the earth
is
always
identical to the volume of the
body itself.54
And
yet,
as we
have
pointed
out
earlier,
Descartes had different
grounds
for be-
lieving
that the acceleration of free fall could not be the same for
all bodies. As we
recall,
he held
that,
of two bodies of
equal
size
but different
composition,
the one with a lesser
quantity
of subtle
matter in its
pores
had to fall faster than the
other.55
When Descartes
affirmed,
in his letter of
June,
1631,
that the
velocity
of fall did not
always
increase
equally,
he
probably
did not
only
wish to
express
that bodies of different mass varied in their
respective
acceleration,
but also that none of these bodies had a
uniform acceleration. In a letter to Mersenne of March
11, 1640,
he admitted in fact his
"inability
to determine" either "the
speed
with which
any heavy body
falls at the
beginning,
since this is a
merely
factual
question
which
depends entirely
on the
speed
of
the subtle
matter,"56
or the
proportion according
to which this
initial
speed
was made to increase after
every single
collision with
the subtle matter:
The subtle matter
pushes
in the first instant the
descending body
and
gives
it one
degree
of
speed;
then in the second instant it
pushes
it a little less
and
gives
it almost one other
degree
of
speed,
and so on in the other
[in-
stants].
This
happens
more or less in a
duplicate
ratio at the
beginning
of
the fall. But this
proportion gets entirely
lost after the bodies have fallen
several fathoms and the
speed
does not increase
any
more,
or almost not at
all.57
pierre
double en
grosseur,
de la moitie
moins
viste
que
la
simple."
The idea that
"a minimal force can move also the
largest
bodies" was abandonned
by
Descartes
in his
Principia,
where he states that a
body, irrespective
of its
velocity,
is unable
to move a
body larger
than itself. On Descartes'
changing
view on this matter, cf.
Des
Chene,
Physiologia,
298-299.
54 Cf. A.T., 8/1: 213-214; A.T.,
11: 76-77.
55
This view is
explained clearly
in the
Principia,
A.T., 8/1: 214.
56
A.T.,
3:
36; C.M.,
9: 190.
57
A.
T.,
3:
37-38; C.M.,
9: 191-2: "La matiere subtile
pousse
au
premier
moment
le cors
qui
descend,
& lui donne un
degr6
de
vitesse;
puis
au second moment elle
pousse
un
peu
moins,
&
luy
donne encore
presque
un
degre
de
vitesse,
& ainsi
des
autres;
ce
qui
fait
fere
rationem
duplicatam,
au commencement
que
les cors
descendent. Mais cette
proportion
se
perd
entierement, lorsqu'ils
ont descendu
plusieurs
toises,
& la vitesse ne
s'augmente plus,
ou
presque plus."
What is ex-
plained
in this letter to Mersenne is discussed in
greater
detail in a
manuscript
written
by
Descartes in 1635 and
published
in the
Excerpta
Anatomica in
The existence of a
in cadendo--a
point
at which
the
falling body
ceases to accelerate further-which in a letter of
1635 Descartes had
presented
as a
possible
effect of the
impeding
action exercized
by
the
medium,58
is now
justified
as the conse-
quence
of the
following dynamic principle:
A decrease in the dif-
ference between the
respective speeds
of the
pushing
and the
pushed
bodies
implies
a concomitant decrease in the
ability
of the
first to act on the
second,
which in turn
implies
that the
speed
of
the
pushing body represents
the limit of the
speed
of the
body
being pushed.
As Descartes
explains
in a later
letter,
written in
June
11, 1640,
this means that the acceleration
imparted by
the
subtle matter on the
falling
bodies
by
each successive
impact
must
diminish
progressively
until it
disappears completely
at the
point
where the
falling body
has reached the
very speed
of the subtle
matter.59
We have seen that Descartes was not able to convert his me-
chanical
explanation
of free fall into a law of acceleration. This
inability
had
to, first,
with the
impossibility
of
measuring
the
proper speed
of the subtle matter
and, second,
with the
difficulty
of
determining
the effect that the latter was
capable
of
producing
with each successive
impact.
To these reasons must be added a
third which Descartes never
explicitly
indicated but which can be
inferred from a letter he sent to Mersenne in
January,
1640. Wish-
ing
to convince his
correspondent
of the fact that
falling
bodies
could not
pass through
an
infinity
of
degrees
of
speed,
Descartes
wrote:
I have
just
looked once more
through my
notes on
Galileo,
where I did not
really state
that
falling
bodies do not
pass through
all
degrees
of
speed,
but
I said that this cannot be determined without
knowing
what
weight actually
is,
which comes to the same. As for
your example
of the inclined
plane,
it
certainly proves
that all
speed
is
infinitely
divisible,
but not that when a
body
A.T.,
11: 621-634. This
manuscript
is discussed in Damerow et al.,
Exploring,
41-
42.
5s
Cf. the
quotation
at fn. 49.
5
A. T., 3:
79;
C.M.,
9: 398-9. It is
interesting
to see that a similar kind of rea-
soning
is found in a
page
of
Beeckman'sJournal,
where its author tries to deter-
mine what would
happen,
in the
void,
if an atom hit
repeatedly
two
globes,
one
of which
very heavy,
the other
very light.
Beeckman reaches the
following
con-
clusion: "Primus
impetus plus promovebit
levissimum
quam graviorem;
sic etiam
secundus etc., donec ad
atomorum,
eadem
semper
celeritate motarum ac de novo
perpetuo impactarum,
celeritatem
pervenerit.
Gravior tandem
quidem
ad eam
celeritatem, sed serius
perveniet; quamdiu
enim non tam
celeriter
movetur
quam
atomus,
semper hujus impetus aliquid
celeritati
adijciet." (I. Beeckman,
Journal,
3:
131,
September, 1629).
begins
to descend, it
passes through
all these divisions. And when one hits
a ball with a
hammer,
I do not think that
you
assume that this ball at the
beginning
of its movement moves more
slowly
than the hammer, nor that
those bodies that are
pushed by
others fail to move from the
very
first mo-
ment onward with a
speed proportional
to that of the bodies
moving
them.
Now,
according
to
me,
weight
is
nothing
else than terrestrial bodies
being
actually pushed
toward the center of the earth
by
the subtle
matter,
from
which
you
can
easily gather
the
consequence.
And
yet,
one must not there-
fore assume that the bodies move at the
beginning
as
quickly
as this subtle
matter
itself;
for the latter
pushes
them
only obliquely,
and
they
are
very
much
impeded by
the air,
in
particular
the
lighter
ones."
Descartes here
explains
the extreme slowness with which bodies
accelerate at the
beginning
of their fall with the fact that
they
are
pushied only obliquely by
the subtle matter-but
then,
we know
that Descartes never
managed
to formulate a
theory
of
oblique
collisions. This
means, however,
that even under the
assumption
that he had found the two
magnitudes
he had been
looking
for-
to wit: the
speed
of subtle matter and the
diminishing quantity
of
velocity
it
conveyed
to the
falling body
in each collision-he would
still not have been able to determine the ratio of acceleration.6'
6
Descartes to Mersenne, 29
January,
1640, A.T.,
3:
9-10; C.M.,
9: 89:
"Je
viens
de revoir mes Notes sur
Galilee,
oiije n'ay
veritablement
pas
dit
que
les cors
qui
descendent ne
passent pas par
tous les
degrez
de
tardivete;
mais
j'ay
dit
que
cela
ne se
peut
determiner sans
scavoir
ce
que
c'est
que
la
pesanteur,
ce
qui signifie
la mesme. Pour votre instance du
plan
incline, elle
prouve
bien
que
toute vitesse
est divisible
t l'infiny,
mais non
pas que lorsq'un
cors commence a
descendre,
il
passe par
toutes ces divisions. Et
quand
on
frappe
une boule avec un
mail,
je
ne
croy pas que
vous
pensiez que
cette boule,
au commencement
qu'elle
se
meut,
aille
moins
vite
que
le
mail;
ny
enfin
que
tous les
corps qui
sont
poussez par
d'autres,
manquent
a se mouvoir,
des le
premier
moment,
d'une vitesse
proportionee
'a celle des cors
qui
les meuvent. Or est-il
que,
selon
moy,
la
pesanteur
n'est autre chose,
sinon
que
les cors terrestres sont
poussez
reellement
vers le centre de la Terre
par
la matiere
subtile, d'oui vous
voyez
aisement la con-
clusion. Mais il ne faut
pas penser, pour
cela,
que
ces cors se meuvent au com-
mencement si viste
que
cette matiere subtile;
car elle ne les
pousse qu'oblique-
ment, et ils sont
beaucoup empechez par
l'air,
principalement
les
plus legers."
61 On the lack of a
theory
of
oblique
collision in Descartes'
philosophy, cf.
Garber, Descartes, 357-358;
and Damerow et
al.,
Exploring,
120-123,
whose authors
draw attention to what seems to be the
only
case in which Descartes deals in a
quantitative way
with a case of
oblique impact.
This
happens
in a letter to
Mersenne of
April,
1643,
where Descartes claims that a
moving
ball
colliding
obliquely
with a smaller ball at rest should make the latter move faster than it
itself moves
(A. T.,
3: 652; C.M. 12: 159).
At first
sight
this statement could
appear
to be in contradiction with the
passage
of the letter of
January,
1640
quoted
above,
where Descartes claims that subtle
matter,
when
colliding obliquely
with
heavy bodies, imparts
to them a
speed
that is
inferior
to the
speed
it would
impart
to them in a
straight
collision. But in fact the two cases are different. As we have
already
mentioned,
for Descartes the volume of subtle matter
pushing
the
body
The reference to the infinite
divisibility
of the
speed
of
fall,
which is contained in the letter
just
cited,
appears particularly
rel-
evant in the
present
context. For it shows that the
argument
from
inclined
planes put
forth in Galileo's
Dialogo
and further devel-
oped
in Mersenne's
Harmonie
universelle seemed to Descartes
only
inconclusive from a
physical point
of
view,
but not false from a
mathematical
point
of view. For while it demonstrated the exist-
ence of infinite
degrees
of
speed mathematically,
it did not
prove
that a
body
in descent
actually
did
pass through
each and
every
of
these infinite
degrees.
On this
issue,
Descartes' view
was,
interest-
ingly enough, diametrically opposed
to Galileo's. For the latter
explained,
in the
Dialogo,
that he did not believe "that it was im-
possible
for nature or for God to confer
immediately"
a deter-
mined
speed
to some
heavy body,
but "that
defacto
nature does not
do so-that the
doing
of this would be
something
outside the
course of
nature,
and therefore
miraculous."'' Descartes,
to the
contrary, argued
in a letter to Mersenne of 1638: "What Galileo
says,
that
descending
bodies
pass through
all
degrees
of
speed,
I
don't think that it
happens
this
way ordinarily,
but that it is not
impossible
that it
happens
sometimes.""63
In other
words,
both
authors,
while
taking opposite
stances on
the
ordinary
course of
events,
did not bar the
possibility
that the
contrary
case could take
place.
Descartes,
it
seems,
did not wish to
exclude the
possibility
of an infinite
divisibility
of
speed
for the
same reason for which he would also insist on the infinite divisibil-
ity
of matter: in both
cases,
the
power
of God had to remain with-
out limits. This attitude
explains
also
why
he was not
ready
to ac-
cept
a
logico-mathematical argument employed by
"Monsieur F."
in a confutation of the Galilean
hypothesis regarding
the actual
passage
of a mobile
through
infinite
degrees
of
speed:
There is
something unsatisfactory
about the
argument
used
by
Monsieur F.
to refute
Galileo,
when he
says
that
"speed
is
acquired,
either in a first in-
stant, or in
any
determined
time,"
for neither one nor the other is true. In
the
terminology
of the
Schools,
one can
say
that "it is
acquired
in
time,
where time is taken
inadequately.""64
toward the earth is
perfectly equal
to the volume of the
body
itself and not smaller
as in the case discussed in the letter of
April,
1643.
62
Galilei, Dialogue,
21
(=G.G.,
7:
45).
63 Descartes to
Mersenne, 11 October
1638, A.T.,
2: 399;
C.M.,
8: 114: "Ce
que
dit
Galilee, que
les cors
qui
descendent
passent par
tous les
degrez
de vitesse,
je
ne
croy point qu'il
arrive ainsi
ordinairement,
mais bien
qu'il
n'est
pas impos-
sible
qu'il
arrive
quelquesfois."
64 Ibid.: "Et il y a du m&conte en
l'argument
dont se sert M. F.
pour
le
[=
ce
The "Monsieur F." mentioned in these lines is none other than
Pierre
Fermat,
who in a treatise that was
only published
in 1922
by
Cornelis De Waard had
attempted
to demonstrate that the
Galilean
hypothesis
of infinite
degrees
of
speed
contradicted the
postulate
that "there can be no motion without some
speed
of a
moved
body"
("nullum
motum fieri
absque
celeritate
aliqua
cor-
poris moti").65
Fermat reasoned on the
assumption
that a
falling
body
could
only acquire speed
either "in
primo
instanti"
or "in
determinato
tempore."
But since the second
possibility,
which was
the one embraced
by
Galileo,
stood in contradiction to the above-
mentioned
postulate,
one could not but choose the alternative
view that the
heavy body
"when it
begins
to move
possesses speed"
("cum incipit
moveri habet
celeritatem").66
It could therefore not
pass through
an infinite number of
degrees
of slowness before
acquiring
that
speed.
But Descartes believed that there existed a third
possibility,
namely
that the
falling body, beginning
from a
position
of
rest,
acquired speed
"in
tempore inadaequate sumpto."
In one of his
subsequent
letters to
Mersenne,
Descartes
explained
that
"By
quantitas inadaequate sumpta,
I understand a
quantity
that
though
possessing
in fact all of its three dimensions should not
always
in
the case at hand be considered as if it had
them."''67 Though
this
definition is
everything
but
clear,
the
only plausible interpretation
seems to be that for
Descartes,
it was in
principle possible
that in
order to
acquire
some finite
speed,
a
body employed
a
quantity
of
time that was smaller than
any
"determined
time,"
but
larger
than
an unextended instant. And
yet,
as he
repeatedly
declared in his
letters to Mersenne between 1640 and
1642,
he was convinced
that,
as a matter of
ordinary
fact,
the
body acquired
a determined
degree
of
speed already
in the first instant of its fall. And the ar-
guments
he used to
persuade
his interlocutor of this
point
invari-
ably appealed
to the "shock" between
colliding
bodies. In a letter
que
dit
Galilee] refuter,
en ce
qu'il
dit
que acquiritur
celeritas,
vel in
primo
instanti,
vel in
tempore aliquo
determinato car
ny
l'un,
ny
I'autre
n'est vray,
et en termes
d'Escole on
peut
dire
que acquiritur
in
tempore inadaequate sumpto."
65"
crit
anonyme
inedit sur
la
chute des
graves,
in Oeuvres de
Fermat,
Supplement
aux
tomes
I-IV,
published by
C. De Waard
(Paris, 1922),
36.
66
Ibid.,
37.
67 Descartes to Mersenne,
15 November 1638, A.T.,
2: 445; C.M.,
8: 209: "Per
quantitatem inadaequate sumptam, j'entens
une
quantite qui,
bien
qu'elle
ait en
effet toutes ses trois
dimensions,
ne se considere
pas
toutesfois au cas
propose
comme les
ayant."
A1
AB
Fig.
8:
A.T.,
3: 593
of
1642,
Descartes asked Mersenne to
imagine
a
large
cannon ball
(A) striking
against
a little
suspended
ball
(B) (cf.
fig.
8).
Now, if one admits that the
body
A suc-
ceeds in
setting
the
body
B into
motion,
then one has to admit
"by
the same to-
ken" also that B moves from the first instant with the same
velocity
of A and that it therefore does not
pass through
infinite
degrees
of
speed.
For if in the
very
first moment
subsequent
to the colli-
sion,
B moved
very slowly,
A-which follows B in close contact-
would be forced to slow down. But this decrease in
speed
would
have to be
definitive,
for
there is no reason that would make it resume afterwards its former
speed,
since the
gunpowder,
which had
initially propelled
it,
is no
longer
active;
and when a
body
has been for one moment
without
moving
or
moving very
slowly,
this amounts to the same as if it had not been
moving
for a
longer
period."
The fact that Descartes
suggested
the use of a cannon ball to simu-
late the action exercized
by
the subtle matter
agrees perfectly
with
the views he had
expressed
in the letter of March
11, 1640,
which
we have
already
had occasion to cite:
I do not
distinguish
between violent and natural
motions; for what dif-
ference does it make if a stone is
pushed by
a man or
by
subtle matter? And
thus, once one admits that violent motions do not
pass through
all the de-
grees
of
speed,
it seems to me that one has to admit the same for natural
motions.69
In his
study
on
seventeenth-century
mechanics,
Rene
Dugas
claims
that Galileo's identification of a
body's tendency
to fall with its
resistance to rise had been sufficient to
destroy
the Aristotelian
distinction between the intrinsic
principle
of the motion of fall
and the extrinsic
principle
of
projectile
motion.7v
The case of
'
Descartes to
Mersenne, mid-November, 1642, A.T.,
3:
593; C.M.,
9: 349-350:
"il
n'y
aura
point
de raison
qui luy
face
par apres reprendre
sa
premiere vitesse,
a cause
que
la
poudre
'
canon,
qui
l'avoit
pousse, n'agist plus;
et
quand
un
corps
a este un moment sans se mouvoir, ou en se mouvant fort
lentement,
c'est autant
que s'il y
avoit est'
plus long temps."
69 Descartes to
Mersenne, 11
March
1640, A.T.,
3:
39; C.M.,
9: 193:
"Je
ne mets
aucune difference entre les mouvemens violens et les
naturels;
car
qu'importe,
si
une
pierre
est
poussee par
un
homme, ou bien
par
la matiere subtile? Et
ainsi,
avofiant
que
les violens ne
passent pas par
tous les
degrez
de
tardivet6,
il
faut,
ce
me
semble,
avoiler
le mesme des naturels."
70 R.
Dugas,
La
mecanique
au
XVII
sikcle
(Paris, 1954),
67.
C
B
D
A
Fig.
9:
A.T.,
3: 593
Descartes
shows, however,
that the converse
is not
necessarily
true:
though taking
re-
course to external
principles
to account for
both free fall and
projectile
motion,
Des-
cartes was
unwilling
to
accept
the Galilean
equation
between downward acceleration
and
upward
deceleration. In a letter to Mer-
senne of
April,
1643,
he
expressed
his convic-
tion that an
arrow,
for
example,
used
up
less
time to rise from A to C than to descend
from C to E
(fig.
9).7
The reason for this
asymmetry lay
for him in the fact that the
deceleration of the arrow between A and C
was uniform while its renewed acceleration
from C to E was
not,
as the
speed
of fall
in-
creased more
rapidly
from C to D than from D to E.
In other
words,
while in
Galileo,
there exists
only
a downward
directionality
which works
symmetrically
on rise and
fall,
in
Descartes
space
itself is matter in motion and therefore influences
rise and fall
asymmetrically.
The letters
analyzed
in this
section,
which cover a time
span
of
more than ten
years,
furnish a
good
illustration of Descartes'
scep-
ticism
concerning
the
validity
of the
principles
of Galileo's new
science of motion. Mersenne,
who had become a convinced
adept
of this science as soon as he had first laid
eyes
on the
Dialogo,
began
to realize
only slowly
the
implications
of the criticism voiced
by
his
correspondent. Admittedly,
Descartes had at first
only
un-
derlined the
inadequacy
of the Galilean
theory
of acceleration for
a world in which
heavy
bodies fell not
through
a
void,
but
through
a medium. But he
subsequently
initiated his
attempts
to
persuade
Mersenne that even in an
imaginary
void,
there could exist no
force such as to accelerate all bodies
according
to the ratio indi-
cated
by
Galileo. Because of the
principle
of the conservation of
the
quantity
of
movement,
one was forced,
so he
claimed,
to as-
sume that all
heavy
bodies received a determined
degree
of
speed
at the
very
moment at which
they
collided with the subtle matter
and that this
speed
increased with each successive
collision,
the
limit of acceleration
being given by
the
very speed
of the
pushing
"
Descartes to Mersenne,
26
April
1643, A.T.,
3: 657; C.M., 12: 164-165.
medium. The motion of fall was therefore not uniform.
Instead,
one had to assume that the
higher
the
speed
of the
falling body,
the less the effect exercized on it
by
the little
pushes
of the subtle
matter.
In
sum,
to
postulate
in the face of Galileo that
gravity
was not
an intrinsic
property
of bodies but instead the effect of forces
working
from without
meant,
for
Descartes,
to
reject
the
hypoth-
esis of the
continuity
of
acceleration,
the odd-number law as well
as the
symmetry
of the
trajectory
of
projectiles.
Mersenne's
first
doubts
While Descartes believed that the
phenomenon
of free fall was
governed by
too
many
variables to be translatable into mathemati-
cal
laws,
some of his
contemporaries
tried instead to substitute
Galileo's law with alternative mathematical formulae. In
October,
1643,
Mersenne wrote a letter to Theodore
Deschamps
which is
unfortunately
no
longer
extant but in which he mentioned two of
these alternative
laws.72
The first of
them,
which had been elabo-
rated
by
Honore
Fabri,
assumed that the
spaces
traversed
by
the
falling body
in successive
equal
times
grew according
to the
series of natural numbers
(i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, ...).
The second of
them,
which had been
thought up by
another
Jesuit,
Pierre Le
Cazre,
proposed
that the
spaces grew according
to the series of ever dou-
bling
numbers
(i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8, ...).
In his
answer,
dated November
1, 1643,
Deschamps
offered, however,
an
interesting
a
priori proof
in favor of the
superiority
of Galileo's odd-number law
(i.e. 1, 3, 5,
7, ...):
Now,
in
reply
to
your
letter, it seems to me that
[neither]
the natural
pro-
gression
of
numbers, nor the
geometrical
double
manage
to measure accel-
eration. For
apart
from the fact that
experience
contradicts
them,
assume
the
following
case: that in one moment of time the
body
descends
by
a cer-
tain
measure,
and in
two,
three and four
equal
moments of
time, the num-
ber of measures follows one or the other
progression.
Now,
if one chooses
for the time of the first
space
another time than the one
formerly
chosen,
for
example
its double or
triple,
the
spaces
traversed will follow no
longer
either the one or the other
progression,
as
they
do,
by
contrast,
in the
pro-
gression
of odd numbers. Which is
easily demonstrated.'"
72
On
Deschamps'
relation with
Mersenne,
cf.
Lenoble, Mersenne, 423-425.
73
C.M., 12: 351: "Maintenant
pour respondre a
vostre lettre,
il me semble
que
la
progression
naturelle des
nombres,
ni
la
geometrique
double,
ne
peuvent
Deschamps
was correct in
pointing
out that Galileo's law of accel-
eration was the
only
one to
possess
a
property
that we would nowa-
days
call scalar
invariance,
which means that it remains valid for
whatever basic unit is chosen to measure the times of descent.
Deschamps' reasoning
can be
exemplified
as follows:
imagine
that
a
heavy body
in free fall
passes
in successive and
equal
intervals of
time t distances
equal
to
either
a) is, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s,
6s
(Fabri)
or
b) is, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s,
32s
(Cazre)
or
c) is, 3s, 5s, 7s, 9s,
Ils
(Galileo)
If one chooses to
assign
a duration of 2t to the successive instants
of
time,
the distances traversed will be as follows:
a') 3s, 7s,
1ls
(Fabri)
b') 3s, 12s,
48s
(Cazre)
c') 4s, 12s,
20s
(Galileo)
If one
compares
the series
a', b',
c' with the series
a, b, c,
one will
at once be able to observe that the ratio between the distances
crossed in successive and
equal
times,
beginning
from
rest,
will
remain invariable
only according
to the law
given by
Galileo. The
growth
of the
spaces
traversed in
equal
times follows in a' a
pro-
gression
that is different from that of the natural numbers
(1s:2s:3s
?
3s:7s:11s),
and in
b'
a
progression
that is different from that of
the ever
doubling
numbers
(1s:2s:4s
?
3s:12s:48s).
In the case
c',
however,
the ratio of odd numbers is
preserved (1s:3s:5s
=
4s:12s:20s).
In other
words,
Cazre's and Fabri's
respective
theories
of acceleration
required
certain determinate units of time in
order to function.
mesurer
l'acceleration.
Car outre
l'experience
contraire,
mettant le cas
qu'en
un
temps
le
grave
descendit une certaine mesure,
et en
deux,
en trois et en
quatre
semblables
temps,
le nombre des mesures
port6es par
l'une ou l'autre
progres-
sion,
si on vient a
prendre pour
le
temps
du
premier espace,
un autre
temps
divers
d'iceluy, comme,
par example,
double ou
triple,
les
espaces parcourus
ne
garderont plus
ni l'une ni
l'autre progression,
comme ils font en la
progression
des nombres
impairs.
Ce
qui
est facile a demonstrer."
Mersenne's
reply
to
Deschamps
is
unfortunately
once more lost
to us. As we shall see further
below,
when Le Tenneur and
Huygens
later defended the Galilean
theory
of acceleration with
arguments very
similar to
Dechamps',
Mersenne remained
unconvinced. His
counter-argument
would in fact be that the va-
lidity
of the odd-number law could not be demonstrated on the
basis of mathematics
alone,
but needed to be derivable from a
physical explanation.
Yet,
a
passage
of the ballistic section of the
Cogitata physico-mathematica
of 1644 seems to indicate
that,
at least
initially,
Mersenne was
impressed by Deschamps' arguments.
There,
the author
explains
that the Galilean law was not
only
in
greater conformity
with
experience
than either Fabri's or Cazre's
laws,
but that it was also confirmed
by
rational
arguments.
For this
reason,
Mersenne continued to
support
the odd number law-at
least for the time
being
and while
waiting
for Descartes to work
out his own
theory
of acceleration:
Since therefore that
progression
of ours
by
odd numbers
[...]
has seemed
always
to
correspond
to our
experience,
and is confirmed
by
its moments of
reasons,
we will retain it until another
progression
will be demonstrated
by
the illustrious sir, who
though
he does not believe that
heavy
bodies
pass
through
all
degrees
of
speed
from the
point
of rest
[...], yet says
that this
progression
is almost
true.74
It is
particularly noteworthy
that in the
eyes
of
Mersenne,
it was
precisely
the
unwillingness
to
accept
the
hypothesis
that a
falling
body passed through
infinite
degrees
of
speed
to have constituted
Descartes' main reason for
dissenting
from Galileo. Mersenne
obviously
believed that the truth of this
hypothesis
also
implied
the
truth of the odd-number law. At the same
time, however,
he
74
M.
Mersenne, Cogitata physico-mathematica (Paris, 1644),
Phaenomena
ballistica,
52:
"Cum igitur
illa nostra
per
numeros
impares progressio [...] semper experien-
tiae nobis
respondere
visa sit,
suisque
rationum momentis
confirmetur, eam
retinebimus, donec alia demonstrata sit
ab
Illustri viro,
qui
licet
gravia
credat non
transire
per
omnes tarditatis
gradus
a
puncto quietis [...],
fatetur tamen hanc
progressionem
esse
proxime
veram." I
interpret
the
phrase "suisque
rationum
momentis"
differently
than
Dear,
who takes it to refer "to the account of uniform
acceleration in free fall first communicated to him
by Beeckman, involving
the
successive
compounding
of
acquired
downward
impulses by
the mobile"
(Dear,
Mersenne, 213, fn.
51). Instead,
I tend to think that "momentum" is here
employed
in a
figurative
sense. Both in the
Dialogue
and in the
correspondence,
Galileo uses
the
expression
"momenti di
ragioni"
to
signify
the
"importance
of reasons"
(cf.
P.
Galluzzi, Momento. Studi
galileiani (Rome, 1979), 416)
or "the
validity
of the
arguments" (Galilei, Dialogue,
369, Drake's
translation).
This
reading
finds
sup-
port
in the Novarum
observationum,
where Mersenne
judges
Le Tenneur's mathe-
matical
arguments
in favor of the Galilean law insufficient in
spite
of what he calls
the "rationum
praestantia" (cf.
fn.
146, below).
seemed to maintain that this law could nevertheless remain
valid,
if
only "approximately,"
also in a world in which bodies
began
to
fall with a determinate
speed:
When I said that the
falling
or
rising
chord
[of
a
pendulum] passes through
all
degrees
of
speed,
I do not wish that
you
take this assertion as
something
demonstrated, but rather as
something probable
and
recognized by
Galileo,
given
that eminent
philosophers
and mathematicians
deny
it, and
though
bodies can
possess
a certain
degree
of
speed
with which
they begin
to move
about the
center,
as would
probably happen
if the descent of stones and
other
heavy
bodies was
produced by
the attraction of the earth or
by expul-
sion in such a
way
that,
just
as water
expels lighter
bodies,
so heavier
things
expel
air or some other matter which is even more subtle than
air,
which
through
its turn-about and
perpetual
revolution shakes off or drives
away
stones and
things
of this kind. All of which
does, however, not
prevent heavy
bodies from
increasing
their
velocity
in the
duplicate
ratio of the
times,
nor
will the sense detect
any
evidence to the
contrary
in
observations.75
With these
lines,
Mersenne
implicitly
admits that the
proof
he had
offered in the Harmonie universelle of the
hypothesis
that a
body
passes through
infinite
degrees
of
speed
was inconclusive. More
importantly,
he seems to
recognize
that this
hypothesis
is incom-
patible
with
any explanation
of free fall that relies on the
impact
of external forces and not
just
with Descartes' belief in the causal
agency
of subtle matter. In
fact,
Mersenne mentions in this con-
nection also another
theory
which ascribes the cause of free fall to
the attraction exerted
by
the
earth.7'
But
precisely
this
theory
of terrestrial attraction had stood at the
center of Gassendi's recent
Epistolae
duae de motu
impresso
a motore
translato of
1642,
with which Mersenne was not
only
well ac-
quainted,
but whose
reading
he recommended to numerous cor-
respondents.
We must therefore assume that
Mersenne,
in the
passage
we have
just
cited,
was also
trying
to think
through
the
75
Ibid.,
44-45:
"Cum
dixi filum descendens vel ascendens transire
per
omnes
gradus tarditatis,
nolim id assertum existimes vti
demonstratum,
sed tantum vt
probabile,
et Galilaeo
visum,
quandoquidem egregij Philosophi
et Geometrae
negant
illud,
et
grauia
certum habere
possunt
tarditatis
gradum quo incipiant
moueri circa
centrum,
vti fieri
probabile,
si
per
terrae
fiat
attractionem
lapidum
et aliorum
grauium,
descensus,
aut
per expulsionem,
vt
quemadmodum aqua
expellit
leuiora
corpora,
ita
grauiora expellat aer, aut alia materia aere
subtilior,
quae
circumactu
suo,
revolutioneque perpetua lapides
et id
genus
excutiat, aut
impellat. Quod
tamen non
impedit quin grauia
suam velocitatem in ratione
duplicata temporum
adeo
proxime augeant,
vt sensus nil contrarium in observa-
tionibus
deprehendat."
76 The
possibility
that bodies are drawn downward
by
the earth was also
granted by
Mersenne's
Cogitata,
tractatus
mechanicus, 21:
"Supponamus igitur,
quod
multi censent
probabile, gravitatem corporum
nil aliud esse
quam
terrae
tractionem,
sive
mutuam,
qualis
est inter
magnetem
et ferrum, sive terrae solius."
mathematical
consequences
of Gassendi's
dynamics,
to which we
must now turn our own attention.
A causal
foundation for
Galileo's kinematics: Pierre Gassendi's
'Epistolae
de Motu' and 'de
Proportione'
As we now turn to
Gassendi,
we must of course
state,
first of
all,
that this author
was,
together
with
Mersenne,
the
driving
force
behind the
divulgation
of the Galilean science of motion in France
and one of the chief
protagonists
in the intellectual debate that
Galluzzi has called the "seconde affaire
galileenne."
In this
long,
if informal
trial,
the new science of motion
played
the role of the
defendant,
the two
Jesuits
Fabri and Cazre acted as
plaintiffs,
and
Gassendi as the chief advocate for the
defense,
soon to be followed
by
Le
Tenneur,
Huygens,
Torricelli and others who were all called
upon by
Mersenne to
participate
in the
debate.77
But as we com-
pare
the roles of the two
protagonists
of this
predominantly
French
debate,
we are struck
by
the
divergence
in the
develop-
ment of their
respective viewpoints.
While both
began
as brothers
in arms in their defense of the Galilean science of
motion,
Mersenne
grew-as
we are
trying
to show in this article-ever
more doubtful about the
possibility
of
reconciling
it with a mecha-
nistic
explanation
of
gravity.
Gassendi,
by
contrast,
remained
throughout
his life convinced of the
validity
of Galileo's law and
tried to
develop
a mechanistic model from which it could be de-
rived. But as we shall
try
to document in the
following pages,
there
existed some difficulties in all of Gassendi's
explanations
that were
persistent
and indeed inherent and which must have nurtured
Mersenne's
growing scepticism
even further.
The
history
of Gassendi's
public
involvement with this issue
must
begin
in the month of
October, 1640,
as our
philosopher
left
the
port
of Marseilles on a trireme with the intention of
verifying
on the
open
sea the result of a
thought experiment
described
by
Galileo in his
Dialogo.78
In the
presence
of Louis de
Valois,
gover-
"
P.
Galluzzi,
"Gassendi e l'affaire Galilee delle
leggi
del
moto,
"
Giornale
critico
della
filosofia italiana, 72
(1993),
86-119.
781t is worth
recalling
that in his Lettera a Francesco
Ingoli
in
risposta
alla
"Disputatio
de situ et
quiete
Terrae"
(1624),
Galileo claims to have carried out the
experience
on the
ship
in
person (Cf. G.G,
6:
545).
For a discussion of this claim
see P.
Ariotti,
"From the
Top
to the Foot of a Mast on a
Moving Ship,"
Annals
of
Science, 28
(1972), 191-203,
esp. 201-202;
L. Conti,
"La dimensione
sperimentale
nor of the Provence and
sponsor
of the
expedition,
Gassendi veri-
fied
that a
heavy
ball
dropped
from the masthead arrived
precisely
at the foot of the mast
irrespectively
of whether the
ship
was at rest
or was
moving
at
high speed.
This observation carried
particularly
important implications,
for it falsified one of the
principal objec-
tions
usually put forward against
the
Copernican theory.
It showed,
by analogy,
that from an observation of the behavior of
objects
placed
on the surface of the
earth,
one could not infer whether
the latter was in a state of rest or instead
moving.79
In December of the same
year,
Gassendi wrote two letters to his
friend Pierre
Dupuy
which were
published
at Paris two
years
later.
Their
objective
was to furnish a detailed
report
on the
experiments
carried out at sea and to
analyze
their
implications
for the domains
of mechanics and
cosmology.80
The central
part
of the first
Epis-
tola
was, however,
dedicated to a causal account of the motion of
free fall.
After
having
described the
trajectory
of a
body falling
down the mast of a
moving ship
as a
half-parabola,
Gassendi went
on to
explain
this
figure
as the resultant of the combination of two
motions,
namely
of a
uniform, rectilinear,
and horizontal motion
"impressed"
on the
object by
the
moving ship,
and of a
uniformly
accelerated and
vertically
downward motion which was caused
by
an external
principle.
But what could be the nature of the latter?
Although
there are various
ways by
which an external cause can
move,
it is
yet
clear that all of them
belong
to
two, as it
were,
outstanding types, namely
impulse
and attraction. Let us therefore discover, whether the cause of the
perpendicular
motion of
falling
bodies is
impelling
or attractive or some
combination of an
impelling
and an attractive cause.8'
della relativith
galileiana,"
in C. Vinti
(ed.),
Alexandre
Koyre.
L'avventura
intellettuale,
(Naples, 1994), 549-576; C.R. Palmerino, Atomi, meccanica, cosmologia.
Le lettere
galileiane
di Pierre Gassendi
(Ph.D. thesis, Florence, 1998),
9.
79
On Gassendi's
experiment,
cf.
A.G. Debus,
"Pierre Gassendi and his "Scien-
tific
Expedition"
of
1640," Archives internationales d'histoire des
sciences,
16
(1963),
129-142; Ariotti,
"From the
Top," passim.
80 Regarding
Gassendi's
Epistolae
de
motu, cf.
A.
Koyr&,
Etudes
galilennes,
(Paris,
1939), 304-317;
J.T.
Clark,
"Pierre Gassendi and the
Physics
of
Galileo," Isis,
54
(1963), 352-370; H.
Jones
"Gassendi's Defence of Galileo: the Politics of Discre-
tion,"
in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini
Guelpherbytani, Proceedings of
the Sixth Interna-
tional
Congress of
Neo-Latin Studies
(New York, 1988), 221-232; Galluzzi, "Gassendi,"
87-89; C.R. Palmerino, Atomi,
7-149.
81
P.G.,
3: 489b-490a:
"Caeterum,
cum
plures
sint
modi,
quibus
causa externa
movet, constat tamen omneis ad
duos,
tanquam praecipuos pertinere, impul-
sionem et attractionem.
Age itaque experiamur,
an-non motus
rerum cadentium,
sive
perpendicularis, aliqua
esset
possit
causa seu
impellens,
seu
attrahens,
seu
potius impellens,
et attrahens simul."
Gassendi's answer
lay
in the
hypothesis
that the motion of fall was
jointly
caused
by
two
forces,
one of which
pushed
the
body
from
above while the other
pulled
from below. The
first,
which he
called vis
impellens,
was exercized
by
the air
which,
when
pushed
aside
by
the
falling body,
was forced to rush
upward
to fill the
space
that had
just
been evacuated
by
the
body
and
thereby pro-
duced on it an additional
pressure
a
tergo.
The vis
attrahens,
in turn
resided in the earth which
continuously
emitted
magnetic particles
which formed veritable little chains
capable
of
reaching
and catch-
ing far-away objects
and of
carrying
them back down to
earth.82
But when Gassendi tries to illustrate the manner in which the
vis attrahens
(or
the vis
impellens, given
that the two forces work
analogously)8"
makes the
body
accelerate,
he uses a
physical
ex-
ample
which resembles the one
frequently
invoked in Descartes'
letters to Mersenne. For he
imagines
a
globe
with an
absolutely
smooth
surface,
placed
on a
perfectly polished plane
and
put
into
motion
by
a little manual
push.
After
having
let the ball run for a
while with unaltered
speed,
the same hand will
give
it a further
push
of
equal intensity
and
thereby
communicate a second im-
pulse
in the same direction. A third
push
is assumed to
follow,
and
then a
fourth,
etc. All of them are taken to constitute
ictus
con-
similes,
or strokes of
equal intensity.
The idea is that in this ex-
ample
the
globe
will increase its
speed according
to the series of
natural numbers. But
despite
the
similarity
of Gassendi's model to
Descartes',
the
presumed
result of his mental
experiment
does not
agree
with Descartes'
explanation
of the acceleration of
falling
82
Gad Freudenthal has
correctly
observed that Gassendi does not succeed at
all in
explaining
how it is
possible
that
particles "issuing from
a
body, conceivably
bring
about a motion toward
it," cf. G. Freudenthal, "Clandestine Stoic
Concepts
in Mechanical
Philosophy:
the Problem of Electrical
Attraction,"
in
J.V.
Field,
F.A.J.L. James (eds.),
Renaissance and Revolution.
Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen
and
Natural
Philosophers
in
Early Modern
Europe (Cambridge, 1993),
161-172. In
1675,
J.B.
La
Grange
had
already
drawn attention to the
contradictory
nature of
Gassendi's
analysis
of the mechanism of attraction:
"I1
n'est
pas
difficile de
combattre
l'opinion
de Gassendi touchant la
pesanteur, puisqu'apres
avoir dit
plusieurs
fois
que
la
pesanteur
consiste en ce
qu'il
sort
perpetuellement
de la
terre des
corpuscules
crochus semblables
'a
des
petits hameCons, lesquels
attirent
en bas tous les
corps qu'ils rencontrent, [...]
il avoue
luy
mesme
[...] qu'il
ne voit
point
comment est-ce
que
ces
corpuscules pourraient obliger
les
corps [...]
de
descendre
[...].
En effet
[...]
il faut encore
qu'il y
ait
quelque
chose
qui
retire ces
petites chaines,
ou
qui repousse
fortement en bas les mesmes
corpuscules, apres
qu'ils
se sont attach6s aux
corps pesants,"
cf.
J.B.
La
Grange,
Les
Principes
de la
philosophie,
contre les nouveaux
Philosophes
Descartes, Rouhault,
Regius,
Gassendi,
Le P.
Maignan,
etc.
(Paris, 1675),
192.
83 Cf.
P.G.,
3: 497a.
bodies.
For,
as we have
seen,
Descartes believed neither that each
successive
push
of subtle matter could
produce
an identical in-
crease of
speed
in a
falling body (given
that the faster the
body
descended,
the less it could be
accelerated),
nor therefore that the
speed
of fall could be
augmented indefinitely.
Furthermore,
Gassendi's
example
is
profoundly ambiguous,
for
the author does not
explain exactly
what he intends
by
ictus
consimiles.
According
to the
principle
of the
relativity
of motion
which Gassendi himself
clearly
formulated in his
Epistolae
de
motu,84
the hand can
only
add a new
degree
of
velocity
to the ball with
each successive ictus if it remains in a state of rest with
respect
to
the ball-which
means,
in this
case,
that it
indefinitely
accelerates
along
with the ball. But if this is indeed Gassendi's
intention,
then
the
pitfall
of the model lies in the fact that it leads to a sort of
explanatory regressus
ad
infinitum.
For to
explain
the indefinite
acceleration of a motum one needs first to assume an indefinite ac-
celeration of the movens.
In this
context,
it is worth
recalling
that
precisely
this
problem
had been at the center of an
exchange
between Galileo and
Cavalieri a number of
years
earlier. In
February
1635,
Bonaventura
Cavalieri sent a letter to Galileo in which he mentioned
having
invented a contrivance
capable
of
accelerating
a small wheel to
infinity by
means of a
large
wheel which turned at constant
speed
and
conveyed
to the first wheel successive
impulses
of
equal
inten-
sity.85
But Galileo
quickly
convinced him of the
impossibility
of his
undertaking,
that is of
obtaining
"with these wheels what
happens
in the case of free fall of bodies." Galileo's refutation of Cavalieri's
model relied on a
simple
consideration:
given
that it was
impos-
sible that the
speed
of the small wheel could come to exceed that
of the
large
wheel,
the
only way
to increase the
speed
of the
former was to increase the
speed
of the latter. And since this was
not foreseen in the
model,
there was no reason for
expecting
that
successive
impulses imparted
to a
body by
a motor that remained
"constantly
in a
given degree
of
speed"
should
produce
a cumula-
tive effect.86
84 Cf. P.G.,
3: 478b.
85 G.G., 26: 204-205.
86 Cf. ibid., 230-231. Cavalieri's
"speed
accumulator" has been
brought
to
my
attention
by
a recent article
by
Michel
Blay
and
Egidio
Festa. The two authors
believe that Cavalieri's
letter,
in which the "accumulator" is
discussed, contradicts
what the same author had maintained in his
Specchio
Ustorio and in his
Geometria
indivisibilibus:
"L'application suggerde par
Cavalieri
[...]
montrait clairement
que
Does it not seem as if the same
objection
is
equally
valid with
respect
to Gassendi's
attempt
to
explain
the cause of acceleration
in fall
through
his
thought experiment
of the hand
pushing
a ball
on a
plane?
The idea that a ball
rolling
on a surface or a stone
falling
downwards can be
indefinitely
accelerated
by
a
repetition
of ictus consimiles inflicted
upon
it
by
a constant force is absurd. As
Galileo
pointed
out to
Cavalieri,
such an acceleration would re-
quire
an increase in the
speed
of the movens: "if the hand wants to
convey
a
greater speed"
to a
sphere-or,
mutatis
mutandis,
the little
magnetic
chains to the stone
-,
"it is first
necessary
that the hand
itself have that
greater speed,
that
is,
that it
begins
to accelerate
first, [...]
and not that it remains constant in a
given degree
of
speed."87
Now,
leaving
aside our own
doubts,
Gassendi himself did not
think that the ball of his
thought experiment
would accelerate
according
to the odd-number
law,
for he
thought
that such an
acceleration would
require
the collaboration of two causal
agents.
For assume that that there is one
single cause, for
example
attraction. You
will understand that from what we have
said, it follows that, since the
mag-
netic
rays,
like
capturing
chains,
impress upon
the stone
through
contact a
motion or
impetus,
and that
they impress
it in the first moment such that it
does not
get
deleted,
but is conserved in the second moment,
in which an-
la
grandeur
vitesse
globale
tait
conCue
comme la "somme" des
degres
de vitesse
successifs, chacun
apparaissant
a
chaque
interval de
temps.
[...]
Tout se
passait
comme si
Cavalieri-physicien acceptait
ce
que Cavalieri-geomitre
n'avait
pas
ose
admettre,
c'est-a-dire la
composition
du continu
'
partir
de ses seuls indivisibles.
Ainsi les doutes
jetes
sur
la
possibilite
d'effectuer
la somme d'un nombre infini
de
degris
de
vitesse,
tombaient
lorsqu'il s'agissait
de
degres
attaches de maniere
visible,
si
l'on
peut dire,
a un
corps
en mouvement.
[...] Ainsi,
pour
Cavalieri,
la
vitesse
globale,
et
l'espace egalement, puisqu'il
etait cense croitre comme la
vitesse,
risultaient
bien d'une somme
que
les
mathematiques
traditionnelles ne
permet-
taient
pas
d'effectuer"
(M. Blay,
E.
Festa, Mouvement, 85). Though having
dis-
cussed at
length
with the
authors,
I am still
unpersuaded by
their
interpretation.
It does not seem to me as if there was in fact a conflict between the "two
Cavalieris,"
for the acceleration that he wished to obtain
by
means of his "accu-
mulator" was the result of an addition of
homogeneous magnitudes (the degrees
of
speed)-and
this was
certainly
no
procedure
that the
"mathematiques
tra-
ditionelles" would have barred. The
only step
that the conclusions of Cavalieri's
Geometria indivisibilibus did not
permit
was the consideration of the total finite
speed
of a
body (which
was
represented by
a
surface)
as the sum of an infinite
number of
degrees
of
speed (which
were
represented by
lines, i.e. the indivisibles
of a
surface).
But none of his conclusions
prevented
Cavalieri from
assuming
that
a
body
could reach in an infinite time an infinite
degree
of
speed
thanks to its
acquisition
of an infinite number of finite
degrees
of
speeds,
which were summed
up
into an infinite line. But it is
precisely
this
assumption
that lies at the basis of
Cavalieri's letter to Galileo
concerning
the "accumulator."
87 G.G.,
16: 231.
other similar
impetus
is added
[...],
in such a
way
that thanks to this con-
tinuous addition, the
impetus grows continuously
and the
speed
becomes
ever faster. It is
certainly easy
to
predict
that from this addition will follow
an increase of
speed according
to the series of natural
numbers,
so that in
the first moment there will be one
degree
of
speed,
in the second two,
in
the third three,
in the fourth four."
It is
noteworthy
that in this
passage
Gassendi does not draw
any
distinction between the
increase,
respectively,
of the
degrees
of
speed,
of the total
speed,
and of the
spaces
traversed. While
Galileo had established in the first
corollary
to the Theorema I de
motu naturaliter accelerato that "while
[...]
the
degrees
of
speed
in-
crease
according
to the
simple
series of numbers in
equal
times,
the
spaces
traversed in these same times
grow according
to the
series of odd numbers
starting
from
unity,"89
Gassendi now be-
lieved instead that the
spaces
traversed in successive but
equal
moments of time had to
grow according
to the ratio of natural
numbers,
just
like the
degrees
of
speed
themselves. This un-
Galilean identification of total
speed, degrees
of
speed,
and
spaces
is, however,
not a mathematical mistake as has at times been main-
tained,90
but
appears absolutely
correct if one looks at the
physi-
cal
premises
on which it is erected. For
according
to the
hypoth-
esis of this French
philosopher,
the acceleration of bodies is the
product
of the action of a force which
operates by
means of con-
secutive
impulses:
When I
speak
of 'first moment' I mean the minimum,
in which one
simple
ictus is
impressed by
attraction,
and a minimum
space
is traversed with a
simple
motion,
and to which
subsequently degrees
of
speed
can be added
by repeated
ictus.91
8
P.G.,
3: 497a: "Nam fac unicam esse
causam,
exempli gratia
attractionem;
concipies quidem
ex dictis
sequi,
ut
quia radij magnetici, quasi stringentes
chor-
dulae,
contin<g>entem
motum,
sive
impetum lapidi imprimunt,
talem
imprimant
in
primo
momento,
qui
non deleatur, sed
perseveret
in
secundo,
in
quo
alius
similis
imprimitur, qui
in
priori
iunctus
perseveret
una cum illo in
tertio;
in
quo
alius similis
adiungitur, atque
ita
consequenter;
adeo ut
impetus
ex continua illa
adiectione continuo increscat,
motusque semper
velocior
fiat.
Verum facile erit
pervidere consequi
ex hac adiectione incrementuum celeritas secundum uni-
tatum
seriem;
nempe
ita ut in
primo
momento sit unus velocitatis
gradus,
in
secundo sint
duo,
in tertio
tres,
in
quarto quatuor."
89
G.G.,
8: 212: "[...]
dum
[...] gradus
velocitatis
augentur
iuxta seriem
simpli-
cem numerorum in
temporibus aequalibus, spatia peracta
iisdem
temporibus
incrementa
suscipiunt
iuxta seriem
numerorum
imparium
ab unitate
[...]."
90
Cf. Clark,
"Pierre Gassendi," 364;
E.
Festa,
"Gassendi
interprete
di Cava-
lieri,
"
Giornale
critico della
filosofia
italiana,
71
(1992), 289-300,
esp. 229-230;
Gal-
luzzi, "Gassendi,"
97.
91 P.G.,
3: 497b: "Cum
primum
momentum
accipio
minimum
intelligo,
in
quo
unus et
simplex
ictus
per
attractionem
imprimatur, peragaturque
minimum
spa-
The first moment of the motion of fall is therefore constituted
by
the interval of time
during
which the
body
traverses a minimum
of
space
with a uniform
speed
which was
imparted
to it
by
the first
and
simple impulse
of attraction. To this first
impulse
are succes-
sively
added all others. Each successive
push
allows the
body
to
pass through
one more minimum of
space
than it had done in the
preceding
moment. This means that the
body
has two
degrees
of
speed
and
passes through
two
spaces
in the second
moment;
has
three
degrees
of
speed
and
passes through
three
spaces
in the
third
moment,
and so forth. Gassendi's error lies thus not in his
calculation,
but
only
in the definition he offers of the
property
of
the motion of fall. For he calls the increase of
speed produced
in
the
body by
the vis attrahens
"continuous,""92 forgetting
that
by
"con-
tinuous" must be
meant,
in the words of Salviati from the
Dialogo,
an acceleration that "is made
continuously
from moment to mo-
ment,
and not
discretely
from one extended
part
of time to an-
other."'93
We recall that Galileo considered the ambient air an obstacle
from which one had to abstract so as to arrive at the formulation
of the law of free fall.
Gassendi,
by
contrast,
believes that
only by
assuming
the
presence
of a medium
capable
of
pushing
the fall-
ing body
could Galileo's law be confirmed." His
hypothesis
is
therefore that the vis attrahens initiates the motion of
fall,
but that
from the second moment
onward,
the vis
impellens
also comes into
play by giving
successive
impulses
to the
body,
each of which con-
fers to it an additional
degree
of
speed per
moment of time. So as
to demonstrate more
clearly
the collaboration between the vis
attrahens and the vis
impellens,
Gassendi makes use of
figure
10,
tium,
motu exsistente
simplici,
et cui
deinceps accedere,
ex
repetitis
ictibus,
gradus
celeritatis
possint."
92 Cf.
P.G.,
3: 497a.
"9
Cf. Galilei,
Dialogue,
228-229
(=
G.
G.,
7:
255); I have modified Drake's trans-
lation.
94
In the first
day
of the
Discorsi, Galileo had deduced the fact that bodies of
different
specific weight
fell in the void with
equal speed
from their behavior in
media of various densities. The
argument
is
roughly
as follows: since it can be
easily
observed that bodies of different
weights
differ
increasingly
less in their
respective speeds
the more the medium in which
they
descend is
supple,
it seems
that one can conclude that in the
void, all of them will fall with the same
speed
(G.G.,
8:
117).
The
analysis
of the different behavior of the same
body
in air or
water serves Gassendi,
by contrast,
to show that the
medium,
with its vis
impellens,
fulfills an active role as a causa adiuvans et
adaugens
motus deorsum velocitatem.
A
F1
O NO M
JC
Fig.
10:
P.G.,
3: 498a
where the lines AB and AC
stand for the
"equally flowing
time,"
the
space
enclosed
by
them
represent
the
"uniformly
growing speed,"
and the
many
triangles
which are identical to
ADE mean "as
many degrees
of
speed,
and hence
parts
of
space,
which the
falling body
traverses."95
It will suffice to count these
triangles
to understand that a
mobile which in the first mo-
ment had received one
degree
of
speed
will receive three de-
grees
in the second
moment,
five in the third
moment,
seven in
the
fourth,
thus
following
the series of odd numbers ab unitate. But
although through
his
joining
of forces Gassendi had
managed
to
arrive at the same law of acceleration as
Galileo,
the
figure
which
he uses to illustrate this law is different than the one found in both
the
Dialogo
and the Discorsi. Gassendi in fact no
longer
identifies
the
growth
of
speed
with the surface of a
rectangular triangle,
but
with that of a isosceles
triangle.
The difference between these two
models does not reside
only
in the choice of
"signifiers,"
but above
all in the
"signified."
While
Galileo had the bases of the
triangles
to
symbolize
the
degrees
of
speed,
Gassendi's
corresponding seg-
ments
KO, ON, NM,
ML are devoid of
any meaning;
the
degrees
of
speed
are,
by
contrast,
represented by
the
triangles
ADE, HKO,
ILM, etc.,
whose number
corresponds
to that of the
spaces
tra-
versed.
Figure
11,
which is used in the Discorsi to illustrate the law of
odd numbers formulated in the first
corollary
of the Theorema II de
motu naturaliter accelerato
helps,
I
think,
much better than the one
used in Gassendi's De motu to understand
why
the vis
impellens
and
the vis attrahens must
together produce
an acceleration
according
to the series of odd numbers ab unitate. The
rectangle
ADEC,
which is
equal
in surface to the
triangle
ABC,
symbolizes
the total
speed
of a
body
which moves in the time
segment
AC with a con-
stant
degree of speed
AD. AD is half of the
degree of speed
BC which is
95
P.
G.,
3: 498a.
reached in the same time AC
by
a
body
which
falls with a
uniformly
accelerated motion.
On the basis of theorem
1,
proposition
1,96
we can affirm "without controversies"-in
Sagredo's
words-that when the total
speeds
of
the two bodies are
identical,
then the
spaces
traversed
by
them in the time AC will also be
identical.
Now,
the
figure
shows
clearly
that
if the
continuously accelerating body passes,
in a second interval of time
CI, through
a
space
that is thrice as
large
as that traversed
in the time interval
AC,
reaching
in the in-
stant
I
a
degree
of
speed
twice as
large
as it
had in the instant
C,
then a
body
in uniform
rectilinear motion which in the first mini-
mum of time AC had traversed a minimum of
A
>
/
l G
lit
P R
, o0
? 0
Fig.
11: G.G., 8: 211
space
with the
"simple" degree
of
speed
AD will
require,
for the
second minimum of
time,
three
degrees
of
velocity
so as to
traverse three minima of
space.
Gassendi's error lies thus in his
wish to
represent
acceleration
graphically
as
continuous,
though
he had defined and
analyzed
it as discrete. If instead of the area
uniformiter
increscens of the
triangle,
he had used the area
difformiter
increscens of the "indented"
polygon,
his readers would undoubt-
edly
have found it easier to visualize the effects
brought
about
in the
body
ex
repetutis
ictibus of the vis attrahens and the vis
impellens.
From what we have said so
far,
one will be able to understand
why
the
reading
of Gassendi's De motu
persuaded
Mersenne that
neither an
explanation
of
gravity
in terms of a vis attrahens nor one
based on a vis
impellens (be
it the air or the subtle
matter)
were
compatible
with the notion that a
falling body passed through
infinite
degrees
of
velocity.
As we have
seen,
both forces were
described
by
Gassendi as
acting
in such a
way
that the
speed
of the
falling body
increased uno initanti at the
beginning
of each inter-
val of time and that it remained constant until the
beginning
of
the
subsequent
instant,
when it received once more a new in-
96 G.G., 8: 208: "Tempus in
quo aliquod spatium
a mobili conficitur latione ex
quiete
uniformiter
accelerata,
est
aequale tempori
in
quo
idem
spatium
confice-
retur ab
eodem
mobili
motu aequabili
delato, cuius velocitatis
gradus subduplus
sit ad
summum
ed
ultimum gradum
velocitatis
prioris
motus uniformiter acce-
lerati."
crease. Mersenne must have been aware that the double-distance
rule which he had used in his Harmonie universelle to
justify
the
odd-number law was valid in the case of continuous acceleration
but not in the case of an acceleration
'by jumps'.
But let us take note of the fact that in his
Epistolae
de
proportione
qua gravia
decidentia accelerantur
(1646),
which he had
composed
to defend the Galilean
theory
of acceleration
against
Pierre Le
Cazre's
attacks,
Gassendi was to
modify
his causal
explanation
of
free fall
quite substantially.97
He would now
argue
that one
single
and
continuously acting
force was sufficient to
produce
the desired
increase of
speed according
to the series of odd numbers. Refer-
ring
back to his
Epistola
de
motu,
he now admitted:
The mistake
lay
in the fact that I
unwisely
admitted that the
speeds
were in
the same
proportion
as the
spaces.
For as I did not
pay
sufficient attention
to the fact that the
degree
of
speed acquired
in the first moment remained
intact in the second moment and was therefore sufficient to cover two
spaces,
I
thought
of it as if it could
only
suffice to cover one
single space.
Thus when I saw that in the second moment three
spaces got traversed,
I
believed that one
space
was traversed thanks to the
degree
that had been
conserved while the others were traversed thanks to the other two
degrees
that had in the meantime been
acquired.98
In his
Epistolae
de
proportione,
Gassendi uses once more the tri-
angle
of
speed
he had earlier used in his letter to Pierre
Dupuy,
but he now endows it with new
meaning.
The
segments
into which
the lines AB and AC are divided
(cf. fig.
10)
still
represent
the
equal
moments of time which flow ab
initio,
and the small
triangles
which make
up
the
large triangle
AKL continue to
represent
the
equal
intervals of
space
traversed
by
the
falling body
from its
origi-
nal
position
of rest. The difference consists in the fact that the
degrees
of
speed
are no
longer
indicated
by
the
surfaces,
but
by
the bases of these
triangles.
Gassendi,
when
giving
the reasons
97
The first
Epistola
de
proportione
was a
response
to Cazre's
Physica
demonstratio
qua
ratio, mensura, modus,
ac
potentia,
accelerationis motus in naturali descensu
gravium
determinantur adversus
nuper excogitatam
a Galilaeo
Galilaei
Florentino
Philosopho
ac
Mathematico de
eodem
motu
pseudo-scientiam (Paris, 1645);
while the second was a
reply
to Cazre's Vindiciae demonstrationis
physicae
de
proportione qua gravia
decidentia
accelerantur
(Paris, 1645).
98 P.G.,
3: 621b: "Iam
lapsus
fuit
quatenus proinde
velocitates
ut
spatia
habere
se admisi
imprudens. Quia
enim non satis attendi velocitatis
gradum primo
momento
acquisitum ita integrum
manere in
secundo,
ut ad
superandum
duo
spatia
valeret,
ipsumque
ita
habui,
quasi
solum valeret ad
superandum
unicum;
ideo cum viderem secundo momento tria
superari spatia,
existimavi facile ita
unum
superari per gradum
manentem,
ut duo alia deberent
per
duos
alios,
in-
terim
acquisitos superari."
behind this
change, explains
that the first interval of time
AE
"is
not an indivisible
entity,
but can be divided into so
many
instants
or 'timelets' as exist
points
or
particles
in AE
(or AD),"
and that
the
velocity "grows
from the
beginning throughout
the entire first
time,
and can be
represented by
as
many
lines as the
parallels
to
DE that can be drawn between the
points
of the lines AD and
AE."99
Gassendi thus admitted that in his
Epistolae
de
motu,
he had
supported
the
hypothesis
that the
speed
of a
body grew
uno
instanti at the
beginning
of each interval of time and would be
conserved intact until the
beginning
of the successive interval. In
the
meantime, however,
he had
persuaded
himself that bodies
accelerated
continuously
within each interval and that for this rea-
son the
degree
of
speed
reached at the end of an interval of time
was sufficient to traverse a
space
twice as
large
in the
following
interval.
This
development
is not without some
irony.
For
Cazre,
who had
tried to convince Gassendi with his
Physica
demonstratio
to withdraw
his
support
for the Galilean
theory
of
acceleration,
had in fact
produced
the
contrary
effect: Gassendi's
reply
demonstrates that
this author had instead moved more
closely
to the
original
Galilean
position.
While
rebutting
the
arguments
of
Cazre,
who
had based his own
theory
of motion on the
assumption
that the
speed
of fall
grew proportionally
to
space,
Gassendi became aware
of the
following: i)
that
only
the
hypothesis
of a
proportionality
between
speed
and time was
compatible
with the notion of a con-
tinuous
acceleration;
and
ii)
that in a continuous
acceleration,
each
degree
of
speed acquired by
the
body during
a determinate
interval of time is
preserved unchanged
in the successive
interval,
where "it acts twice as much because of its
constancy."'00
The eventual
consequence
of these new
insights
was that
Gassendi understood that he could
simplify
his causal
explanation
of the motion of free fall with
respect
to the models he had devel-
oped
earlier. He now felt that it was
enough
to entrust the entire
effect to the vis attrahens. The
resulting theory
was of course much
more economical and coherent than the one he had
developed
in
his letter to Pierre
Dupuy.
For the
hypothesis
that the air exercized
a
propelling
force on the
falling
bodies had not
only
rendered the
99 Ibid., 566a
'00
Ibid., 608b.
correspondence
between downward acceleration and
upward
de-
celeration
highly problematic,"'
but it had also
introduced,
in his
De
motu,
a radical break between a mechanics of the
plenum
and a
mechanics of the vacuum: for
according
to this
treatise,
heavy
bod-
ies should have
obeyed
the Galilean laws of acceleration
only
in a
plenum;
but at the same
time,
uniform rectilinear motion could
only
have been
preserved
in a vacuum! In the
Epistolae
de
pro-
portione,
these two mechanics were
finally
reunited.
There,
the
medium was no
longer
considered a
quantifiable
force,
but an
obstacle from which one had to abstract so as to be able to
give
a
mathematical
description
of the
phenomenon
of free fall.
The
publication
of Gassendi's
Epistolae
de
proportione (1646) did,
however,
not
persuade
Mersenne to abandon the
scepticism,
first
expressed
in the
Cogitata (1644), regarding
the
possibility
of rec-
onciling
the odd-number law with an
explanation
of
gravity
in
terms of terrestrial attraction. As we shall see further
below,
in his
Novarum observationum... tomus III Mersenne was to
praise
the skill
with which Gassendi had refuted Cazre's
theories,
but at the same
time
expressed
once more his own conviction that neither some
vis attrahens nor
any
vis
impellens
could make
falling
bodies accel-
erate
according
to Galileo's law.
According
to Paolo
Galluzzi,
the reason for Mersenne's overt
scepticism
is due to the fact that Gassendi's
Epistolae
de motu
(1642)
and de
proportione
(1646), respectively,
had
forged
a
strong
alliance
between Galilean
dynamics
and
Copernican cosmology.
Galluzzi
surmises that this combination
might
have
frightened
Mersenne,
pushing
him "to formulate also for the laws of motion a kind of
'Osiander
argument' [...],
to the
great
satisfaction of the Fathers
of the
Society
of
Jesus."102 Though
such a motivation should of
course not be
excluded,
and was
certainly
at work in the case of a
number of Aristotelian foes of Galileo's new science of
motion,
I
believe that Mersenne's
growing scepticism
must be
explained
much rather as a
consequence
of a number of
theory-inherent
problems.
For
though
the causal
explanation
of acceleration fur-
nished
by
Gassendi in his De
proportione presented
itself as a
theory
101
In his last letter to
Cazre,
Gassendi himself admits that if the air were able
to exercize a
tergo
some
pressure
on the
falling
bodies, the same would have had
to be the case for
ascending
bodies.
P.G.,
3: 622a: "Non ne
ergo,
si descendendo
iuvat
air impetum
a
gravitate impressum:
necesse est,
ut ascendendo iuvet
impetum impressum
a manu?"
102
Galluzzi, "Gassendi," 112.
fully compatible
with Galileo's
account,
it was beset
by
mathemati-
cal and
physical
difficulties. Gassendi did
maintain,
it is
true,
that
the acceleration of fall occurred in a continuous manner and
rep-
resented the
degrees
of
speed by
lines and no
longer by
surfaces.
But he could still not be moved to declare
explicitly
that time was
composed
of an
infinity
of
instants,
space
of an
infinity
of
points,
and
speed
of an
infinity
of
degrees.
To admit the
mathematically
indivisible would have created enormous
problems
for
Gassendi,
the
atomist,
who after all believed that all
physical magnitudes
must be made
up
of
indivisible,
but
extended,
parts.'03
The
theory
of acceleration as
given
in the
Epistolae
de
proportione
was
ambiguous
not
only
from the mathematical
point
of view
(be-
cause of Gassendi's silence on the
problem
of the
passage
of the
body through
infinite
degrees
of
speed),
but also from the
physi-
cal
perspective.
How could a force which acted
by
contact
possibly
produce
a continuous acceleration? We have earlier seen that
Gassendi's model of the ball
pushed
at
regular
intervals
by
a hand
was in
reality incapable
of
explaining
the indefinite acceleration
1os Incidentally, Gassendi's
unwillingness
to admit the existence of mathemati-
cal indivisibles was to lead in the
Syntagma
to a
paradoxical
solution. On the one
hand, its author reconfirmed his
support
for the Galilean
theory
of acceleration
as a continuous
process,
on the other he described the uniform rectilinear mo-
tion of the
macroscopic
res concretae as an alternation of motion and rest. In the.
Syntagma,
Gassendi
explains
that the
only really
continuous movement found in
nature is the rectilinear uniform motion of the atoms which move all at a
speed
of one minimum of
space per
minimum of time. The motions of the
compound
res concretae, which are slower than those of the
atoms, are in fact all discontinu-
ous: "Ita licere videtur
concipere
motum,
quo
Atomi
per
inane
ferri
dicuntur
[...]
esse
velocissimum;
omneis vero
gradus, qui
ex
illo,
ad meram
usque quietem sunt,
ex
intermistis
paucioribus, pluribusve quietis particulis
esse."
(P.G.,1: 341b).
The
first to observe the radical
inconsistency
between the
principle
of inertia stated
by
Gassendi in his
Epistulae
and the
theory
of discontinuous motion set forth in
the
Syntagma philosophicum
was A.
Koyre,
"Pierre Gassendi: le savant,"
in Centre
international de
synthese,
Pierre
Gassendi,
1592-1655. Sa vie et son oeuvre
(Paris,
1955),
59-70 and
108-115,
esp.
109.
Koyre's argument
has been further
developed
by
P.A.
Pav,
"Gassendi's Statement of the
Principle
of
Inertia," Isis,
57
(1966),
24-
34;
M.H.
CarrY,
"Pierre Gassendi and the new
philosophy," Philosophy,
33
(1958),
112-120;
W.
Detel, "War Gassendi ein
Empirist?,"
Studia
Leibnitiana,
6
(1974),
178-
221;
B.
Brundell,
Pierre Gassendi. From Aristotelianism to a New Natural
Philosophy
(Dordrecht, 1987),
79.
Disagreement
with
Koyr6's
criticism has been voiced
by
O.R. Bloch, La
philosophie
de Gassendi. Nominalisme,
mate-rialisme
et
metaphysique
(The Hague, 1971), 226-227,
who claims that the
theory
of the
discontinuity
of
motion
plays only
a
passing
role in the
Syntagma, being nothing
else than an ad
hoc
hypothesis
introduced so as to account for the
paradoxes
of motion. Bloch's
interpretation
has been
convincingly
refuted
by
M.
Messeri, Causa e
spiegazione.
Lafisica
di Pierre Gassendi
(Milan, 1985),
86-93.
of a
body
in discrete
steps.
It should be obvious that it was even
less
capable
of
explaining
continuous acceleration. As a matter of
fact,
in the
Epistolae
de
proportione,
the reader
gets acquainted
with
both a law of acceleration and the name of the
presumed
under-
lying
cause,
that
is,
terrestrial
attraction,
but with no
physical
model to visualize or otherwise
imagine
the
functioning
of this
cause. The
fragile
crossbreed between Galileo's law and Gassendi's
causal
explanation
left no
space
for
any physical model-building.
Physical
reasons
against
Galileo's
law: Fabri and Baliani
We have seen how Gassendi
adjusted
the
original
causal
explana-
tions of free fall of his
Epistolae
de motu so as to obtain a more faith-
ful
dynamic
translation of Galileo's kinematics. For
Gassendi, then,
Galileo's odd-number law remained the
non-negotiable part
of his
theory;
his
attempts
to lessen the evident tension between math-
ematics and causal
explanation
were thus directed
exclusively
at a
redefinition of the models of the
physical
forces held
responsible
for
gravity
and acceleration. But
obviously,
the conflict between
mathematics and
physics
could also be resolved in the
opposite
way, by trying
to
adjust
the mathematics to the
hypothetical physi-
cal models. A
figure
who well
exemplifies
the latter reaction is
Giovan Battista
Baliani,
whose name often
figures
in Mersenne's
works.
Baliani is a
particularly interesting
case as he had
published,
in
the
very year
of Galileo's
Discorsi,
a work entitled De motu natura-
lium
gravium
solidorum in which he
formulated-quite indepen-
dently
from
Galileo,
as it would
appear-the
same law of odd
numbers. A few
years
later, however,
and
just
a few months after
the
publication
of Gassendi's
Epistolae
de
proportione,
Baliani
pub-
lished a second edition of his
original
De motu in which he
explic-
itly rejected
his earlier odd-number law and defended instead the
law of natural
numbers.'04
The reason for this
change
of mind
lay
in the fact that he had
simply
not been able to find
any
causal ex-
planation
that could have accounted for the former
law,
but more
than one
explanation
to
yield
the latter. Baliani had now come to
104 For an account of Baliani's
theory
of free
fall,
see S.
Moscovici,
L'experience
du mouvement.
Jean-Baptiste
Baliani
disciple
et
critique
de Galilee
(Paris, 1967);
G.
Baroncelli, "Introduzione,"
in G.B.
Baliani, De motu naturali
gravium
solidorum
et
liquidorum,
tr. and ed. Baroncelli
(Florence, 1998).
believe that a
falling body
which was moved either
naturally
or
violently ("seu
naturaliter a
gravitate
deorsum,
seu violenter
ab
impellente")
received at
regular
intervals of
space
new identical
degrees
of
impetus.
Each consecutive
impetus,
in
turn,
was added to
the ones
previously acquired
and remained intact until the end of
the movement. The
implication
of this idea was that when the
impetus
doubled,
tripled
or
quadrupled,
the
velocity
of the mobile
doubled,
tripled
or
quadrupled
also.
Just
like Gassendi in the first letter to Pierre
Dupuy,
Baliani
described acceleration as a sum of uniform
motions,
each of which
possessed
a
speed vn
which was a
multiple
of the
speed
v1
of the
first motion. But unlike
Gassendi's,
Baliani's
theory
had
only
one
force at
play,
which meant that the law of acceleration had to fol-
low the series of natural numbers. He
justified
both his
previous
'error'
and the continued adherence of some
contemporaries
to
the Galilean formulation of the law
by saying
that the difference
between the two laws was
experimentally imperceptible.'05
Paolo Galluzzi has
given
us
good
reasons for
believing
that Ba-
liani's
change
of mind did not occur
independently ofJesuit pres-
sure.'"6
It has in fact been
repeatedly observed'07
that Baliani's later
theory
resembled the views of the
Jesuit
Honore Fabri as
presented
in the Tractatus
physicus
de motu locali of
1646.108
We have seen that in the ballistic section of the
Cogitata physico-
mathematica,
Mersenne mentions
among
others the law of accelera-
tion formulated
by
the
"philosophus
subtilissimus" Honore Fabri.
We know that the Minim had
already
in 1643
begun
a
correspon-
dence with this
Jesuit
in which he communicated his various
'05
G. B.
Baliani,
De motu naturali
gravium
solidorum et
liquidorum (Genua, 1646),
71:
"Augetur igitur,
ni
fallor, motus
iuxta
progressionem arithmeticam,
non nu-
merorum
imparium,
ab unitate huc
usque
creditam, sed naturalem; at nihilo-
minus,
cum fere idem effectus
subsequantur,
ob insensibilem
discrepantiam,
mirandum non
est, creditum fuisse
spatia
esse in
duplicata
ratione
temporum;
quandoquidem
etiam si verum
precise
fortasse non
sit,
est attamen adeo veritati
proximum, ut
veritatem in adhibitis
experimentis
sensus
percipere nequiverit,
quamobrem
excusandi sunt
quicunque
ita censuerunt."
106 Galluzzi, "Gassendi," 114-115. For Baliani's relations with the
Jesuits, cf.
C.
Costantini, Baliani e i Gesuiti. Annotazioni in
margine
alla
corrispondenza
del Baliani
con Gio.
Luigi Confalonieri
e
Orazio
Grassi
(Florence, 1969).
'07
Cf. S.
Drake,
"Impetus Theory
and
Quanta
of
Speed
before and after
Galileo,"
Physis,
16
(1974), 47-65,
esp.
50-51; Dear, Mersenne, 216; Galluzzi
"Gassendi," 115.
108
The Tractatus
physicus (Lyon, 1646)
was a collection of Fabri's
physics
lec-
tures collected and edited
by
his student Pierre Mousnier.
doubts
regarding
the
validity
of the law of natural numbers.
In a
long
letter of
August
1643-which also
happens
to be the
earliest extant
piece
of this
correspondence-Fabri
enumerated a
number of Mersenne's
objections
and
suggested
answers to each
of them. First of
all,
he tried to account for the
discrepancy
be-
tween his own law of acceleration and the results of
experimental
measurements
by saying
that if
only
he had been able to use "in-
stants" as his units of
time,
he would have been able to show that
the
spaces
traversed in free fall
actually
did
grow according
to the
law of natural numbers. But since "in actual
experience
one can
only
take a
portion
of time that contains various
instants,
as is cer-
tain,
one should not be
surprised
to find that the
proportion
found
by experience corresponds roughly
to
Galileo's."'19
In other
words,
while
Deschamps
had criticized the
inflexibility
of the law
of natural numbers as a fundamental
defect,1o?
Fabri saw in it a
way
for
saving
the
phenomena.
The
larger
the time interval chosen as
the unit of measure-so he
argued-the
smaller the difference be-
tween his own law of acceleration and
Galileo's,
the
implication
being
that his own true law would
only
be
completely
verified if
one could measure the
spaces
traversed in the
physical
instants.
The notion of the finite
physical
instant which constituted one
of the essential foundations of Fabri's
theory
of motion was hard
to
accept
for Mersenne. The
composition
of the continuum out of
indivisible
parts
not
only
contradicted the entire book X of
Euclid's
Elements,
but it also did not allow for an
explanation
of
incommensurable ratios between
magnitudes.
In
answering
the
109 C.M., 12: 289:
"[...]
dans
l'experience
l'on ne
peut que prendre
une
partye
qui
contient
plusieurs instants, ce qui
est
certain,
il ne faut
pas
s'estonner
sy
la
proportion
trouvee
par l'experience respond
a
peu pres
a celle de
Galilee."
An
analysis
of this letter is found in
Galluzzi, "Gassendi," 100-102. For Fabri's
theory
of
acceleration, cf. Drake,
"Impetus," esp.
47-65; id.,
"Free Fall from Albert of
Saxony
to Honore Fabri," Studies in
History
and
Philosophy of Science, 5
(1975),
347-
366;
D.C.
Lukens,
An
Aristotelian
Response
to Galileo: Honore
Fabri,
S.J. (1608-1688)
on the Causal
Analysis of Motion, (Ph.D. thesis, University
of
Toronto, 1979); Dear,
Discipline,
138-144. For other
aspects
of Fabri's science, cf. E.
Fellmann,
"Die
mathematischen Werke von Honoratus
Fabry," Physis,
1
(1959), 6-25;
A.
Boehm,
"L'aristotelisme
d'Honor6
Fabri
(1607-1688),"
Revue des sciences
religieuses,
39
(1965), 305-360;
E.
Caruso,
"Honore Fabri
gesuita
e
scienziato," Miscellanea
seicentesca.
Saggi
su
Descartes, Fabri, White (Milan, 1987), 85-126;
E.
Fellmann,
"Honore Fabri
(1607-1688)
als
Mathematiker-eine
Reprise,"
in P.M.
Harman,
A.
Shapiro (eds.),
The
Investigation of Difficult Things: Essays
on Newton and the
History of
the Exact Sciences in Honour
of
D. T.
Whiteside (Cambridge, 1992),
97-112.
0
Cf.
above,
pp.
295-96.
objections
raised
by
the
Minim,
Fabri
tried,
in a rather
unique
manner,
to reconcile his own
physical
atomism with the Aristote-
lian
theory
of the continuum
by arguing
that
"being potentially
divisible is the same
thing
as
being actually
indivisible or not to
contain distinct
things
of which the one can
truly
be
separated
from the
other,
but to be able to
correspond
to distinct
things only
by
coextension.""' The fact that matter was
composed
of extended
and
impenetrable parts
of
given shapes
"is of no
weight against
the
incommensurability
of
Euclid,
who is not
considering
matter,
but
only
its extrinsic
quantity
or
extension."'12
The letter continues with Fabri's
attempt
to
clarify
his own
physi-
cal
explanation
of free
fall,
which had in God the first cause of its
motion and in the
impetuosity
its immediate cause. This immedi-
ate cause
produced
in each instant of time a new
point
of
impetu-
osity,
while the first cause made sure that the
points previously
ac-
quired
were
preserved.
To
Mersenne,
who had earlier
objected
that the conservation of motion was in no need of a
cause,
Fabri
now
pointed
out that
if it is true
[...]
that the
degree
of
speed
which existed in the first instant
remains in the second instant
together
with the
degree
that has been
added,
then it is
doubtlessly necessary
that its cause remain
also,
which is its
impetu-
osity.
Hence it is
necessary
that it be conserved
by
a different
cause,
for oth-
erwise the second
degree
would not be
produced."1
In the
concluding pages
of the
letter,
the
Jesuit
tried to account
for the fact that bodies of different sizes and materials fell with the
same
speed.
He
argued
that the
spatial
extension of the
moving
body
did not influence "the intention of the effect
produced
in-
side,
but
only
outside" the
body.
With
this,
he wished to
express
that a
point
of matter and a cannon ball fell in the void with the
same
speed,"14
but that the effect
they
each
produced upon impact
with an external
body
was
directly proportional
to their
respective
weights.
A
complete
and detailed
exposition
of the same
theory
was to
.I
C.M., 12: 291.
112
Ibid., 292.
"'
Ibid., 296:
"[...]
si c'est
vray [...] que
le
degr6
de vitesse
qui
estoit au
pre-
mier instant demeure encores au 2d instant avec le
degr6 qui
est
adjouxt6,
il faut
sans doubte
que
sa cause demeure
aussy, qui
est
l'impetuosit6;
donc il faut
qu'elle
soit
conserv6e par
une autre
cause;
autrement le 2d
degr6
ne seroit
pas produit."
114 Note that one of the crucial
points distinguishing
Fabri's
physics
from
Aristotle's lies in his admission of the
possibility
of a motion in the
void,
cf.
ibid.,
299.
be
published
in the Tractatus
physicus
de motu locali
(1646),
whose
first two books treat de
impetu
and de motu naturali
deorsum,
respec-
tively,
in a
rigidly
axiomatic fashion. At the
beginning
of the first
book,
Fabri defines
"impetus"
as a
permanent quality,
which is
"really separate
from the substance of the
moving body"
and which
is the formal cause of motion."' If motion is the
secondary
formal
effect of
impetus, impetus
in turn is the effect of an efficient cause.
Here Fabri introduces a distinction between violent
impetus,
which
is
produced by
an external force and does not have a determinate
direction,
and natural
impetus,
which is the
product
of the sub-
stance of the
body,
and is
always
directed towards the center of the
earth."6 It is the natural downward motion to
provide
the
subject
of the second book of Fabri's
Tractatus;
the first theorem is dedi-
cated to
demonstrating
that this motion comes from within the
body ("ab intrinseco").
In his
proof,
the
Jesuit proceeds by
elimi-
nation,
rejecting
one after the other all
explanations
of free fall
which
appeal
to an external force. He himself was convinced that
bodies could not be
pushed
downward either
by
air,
by
some
magnetic
force,
by
celestial
matter,
or
by light,
nor indeed
"by any
other extrinsic
agent,
as can be established
by
induction.""' Fabri
is thus
obliged
to conclude that the
speed
of fall increases as the
effect of an internal cause which also
grows;
this internal cause is
not
gravity
"which is
always
the
same,"
but the
impetus,
which is the
product
of
gravity."8
The action of this
impetus
is described in the Tractatus in terms
that are similar to those we have
already
found in the letter to
Mersenne. In
fact,
Fabri insists once more that time is made
up
of
indivisible instants in which "the
impetus equally grows
and is re-
inforced.""9 And he
explains:
I have used above the
expression
"in
equal
instants," because the nature of
time cannot be
explained
other than
by
finite instants as I will demonstrate
in the
Metaphysica;
whatever it
may
be,
I call an instant that whole time in
which
something
is
produced
all at once.120
15 Fabri, Tractatus,
17-19.
116
Ibid., 69.
117
Ibid., 76-79.
118
Ibid.,
80.
119
Ibid.,
87.
120
Ibid., 87-88: "[...] dictum esse
supra
instantibus
aequalibus, quia temporis
natura aliter
explicari
non
potest, quam per
instantia
finita,
ut demonstrabimus
in
Metaphysica; quidquid
sit,
voco instans totum illud
tempus, quo
res
aliqua
simul
producitur [...]."
The demonstration of the existence of
physical
instants,
to which
Fabri refers in the lines
just quoted,
is found in the IX book of the
Metaphysica,
which Fabri had Mousnier
publish
in 1648. Here Fabri
argues
that "there are
physical
instants,
because there is action
through
which a
thing is."'21
The existence of
things requires
a
conserving
action,
and this action has to
change
"in
single
instants,
for a
permanent thing existing
now
might
not exist in the follow-
ing
instant."'22
But
given
that
nothing
can exist or move in a math-
ematical
instant,
time must be
composed
of
physical
instants in
which
physical
actions take
place
totae simul.
In the
Tractatus,
Fabri
accordingly
defines the first instant of
motion as "the whole time in which the first
acquired impetus
is
produced
totus
simul."'23
This first instant is followed
by equal
in-
stants in each of which the total
previous impetus
is conserved while
a new
impetus
is also
acquired.
Therefore,
if in the first instant
there is one
degree
of
impetus
in the
falling body,
there will be two
in the second
instant,
three in the third and so
forth,
"according
to the arithmetical
progression."'24
And since the
velocity grows
just
like the
impetus
itself and the
spaces
traversed
just
like the
speed,
it follows that
"spaces grow
in
single
and
equal
instants
according
to the arithmetical
progression" (cf. fig. 12).125
K
Fig.
12: Fabri, Tractatus
physicus, s.p.
But Fabri
carefully
underlines,
once
more,
that this ratio is
only
valid for the
spaces
that are traversed in the
physical
instants
and that if one chooses as one's measure
temporal
units
composed
of various in-
stants,
"the ratio between
spaces
will turn
out to be
greater
than the ratio between
speeds."''26
And
given
that in
experimental
settings
one
always
takes units of time that
are made
up
of a
huge
number of
instants,
it is obvious that the measured
growth
of
spaces
will have to follow a different
pro-
gression-and
in fact one that is close to
121 H.
Fabri,
Metaphysica demonstrativa,
sive scientia rationum universalium
(Lyon,
1648),
371.
122
Ibid.,
367.
123
Fabri, Tractatus, 89.
124
Ibid.,
88.
125
Ibid..
126
Ibid.,
89.
Galileo's.127 Fabri summarizes the difference between his own law
and Galileo's in the
following
words:
Indeed in that common view,
according
to which time is made
up
of
parts
that are
actually
infinite, Galileo's
progression
can take
place.
This, then,
must be considered the crux of the
problem:
the
simple progression
has a
physical principle,
but no
experimental
evidence;
the
progression according
to odd numbers has evidential confirmation but no
principle.
We reconcile
both of them with the
physical principle
and with
experience,
for the first
progression
becomes the second,
when one assumes sensible
parts
of
time,
and the second turns into the first,
when one assumes ultimate instants."28
The fact that Galileo's
theory
of acceleration does not
provide
a
causal
explanation
of the
phenomenon
of fall is in Fabri's
eyes
a
clear
sign
of its
inadequacy.
The
Jesuit
is convinced that the law of
natural
numbers,
which he has derived from a
physical analysis
of
the
growth
of the
impetus,
has to be
preferred
to Galileo's
"pro
theorica rei
veritate,"
despite
the fact that it cannot be verified
experimentally.
In the context of his
attempted
confutation of Galileo's science
of
motion,
Fabri seems to attribute a
particular weight
to theorem
61 of his
Tractatus,
which is
designed
to
prove
that:
A
naturally
accelerated motion does not
pass through
all
degrees of speed.
For there
are as
many degrees
of this
passage
as are the instants that make
up
the
duration of this
motion,
since in each instant a new
impetus
is added. But
there exist no infinite instants,
as we shall
prove
in the
Metaphysics.
And
even if there were infinite
instants,
this
passage
would still not be
through
all
degrees
of
speed,
for there would be some
degree
of
speed
that this se-
ries of
degrees
does not
comprise.'29
The fact that a
body rolling
down a
plane
moves more
slowly
than
one which falls
vertically
and that the
speed
of fall is slower in
127
Ibid.,
115.
28
Ibid.,
108: "immo in communi illa
sententia,
in
qua
dicitur
tempus
constare
ex
partibus
actu
infinitis, progressio
Galilei tantum locum habere
potest; igitur
haec esto
clavis
huius
difficultatis; progressio simplex principium physicum
ha-
bet,
non
experimentum; progressio
numerorum
imparium experimentum
non
principium; utramque
cum
principio
et
experimento componimus; prima enim
si assumantur
partes temporis
sensibiles transit in
secundam, secunda in
primam,
si ultima assumantur instantia."
129 Ibid.,
96: "Motus naturaliter accelerato non
propagatur per
omnes tarditatis
gradus;
quia
tot sunt huius
propagationis gradus, quot
sunt instantia,
quibus
durat hic
motus, cum
singulis
instantibus nova
fiat impetus
accessio, sed non sunt infinita
instantia, ut demonstrabimus in
Metaphysica; praeterea
licet essent infinita instan-
tia, non fieret adhuc
per
omnes tarditatis
gradus
haec
propagatio; quia
daretur
aliquis gradus
tarditatis,
quem
non
comprehenderet
haec
graduum
series; [...]."
water than in air
proves
in Fabri's
eyes
that these various motions
must
begin
each with different initial
speeds.
This
signifies,
for
him,
that even if there do exist infinite instants of
time,
it would
be
physically impossible
that a
body actually passes through
an in-
finite number of
degrees
of
speed.
In this
section,
we have seen that for
Fabri,
the
passage
of the
mobile
through
infinite
degrees
of
speed
was the crux of the en-
tire
problem
of the fall of bodies. His
arguments helped
to rein-
force Mersenne's conviction that this was indeed the issue that had
to be settled before
any
law of acceleration could be
accepted
as
physically
valid. As we shall see in the
following
section,
his inter-
est in this
question grew
to the
point
where he would call
upon
a
number of
contemporary
natural
philosophers
and mathemati-
cians to
propose
solutions.
Mathematical reasons in
favor of
Galileo's law: Le
Tenneur, Torricelli,
and
Huygens
Soon after the
publication
of the Tractatus
physicus
de motu
locali,
Mersenne had called on the mathematician
Jacques
Alexandre Le
Tenneur to defend the Galilean
theory
of acceleration
against
the
attacks of the "most acute" Fabri.3so In
April
1647,
the Minim re-
ceived a
very long
letter in return in which Le Tenneur
attempted
to
falsify
the
hypothesis
of a discontinuous
growth
of
speed
to-
gether
with the law of natural numbers.'3' In his criticism of Fabri's
theory,
the Parisian mathematician insisted in
particular
on the
contradictory
nature of the
concept
of
physical
instant. Le Ten-
neur recalled that Fabri had
rejected
Galileo's view because it
required
the existence of mathematical instants. But his own
impetus theory
relied on
nothing
else but such mathematical in-
stants! For how else was one to
interpret
the idea that the
moving
body acquired
at the
beginning
of each
physical
instant of time one
additional
degree
of
speed
totus simul and
kept
it intact while tra-
versing
the minimum? What else than a mathematical indivisible
was this "initium" of the
physical
minimum? The fact that in the
Tractatus
physicus,
the
growth
of the
spaces
covered
by
a
falling
body
was
represented
non
per triangula,
sed
per rectangula (cf. fig.
130 Cf. Le Tenneur's letter to Gassendi of 16
January,
1647, C.M.,
15: 49.
131
Le Tenneur to
Mersenne, 13
April, 1647, C.M.,
15: 173-199
12)
showed furthermore
clearly
that it was
Fabri,
and not
Galileo,
to assume that acceleration took
place
in one mathematical instant
and that it was in one mathematical instant that the
body jumped
from a state of rest to a first
degree
of
speed,
and then to a sec-
ond, third, etc.'32
Finally,
the overall
superiority
of Galileo's law of
acceleration over Fabri's was also
demonstrated,
in the
eyes
of Le
Tenneur,
by
the fact that
only
the former was valid
irrespective
of
whatever unit of time was chosen for the measurement of the first
interval of time. Like
Deschamps
before
him,
Le Tenneur
recog-
nized the
property nowadays
called "scalar invariance" and
pointed
out that
the
multiplication
of times
according
to
any proportion
whatsoever
always
confirms the uniform
proportion among
the
spaces,
and it does not
happen
that
you get
a
larger
or a smaller
space
if the
equal
times
get longer
or
shorter
[...].
Nor will there be a
larger
ratio between four
spaces
and two
spaces,
than between two
spaces
and one
space;
nor will there occur a
larger
or smaller
space. [...].
But all is found to cohere and
agree marvelously.'"s
A
D
E
F G
2a
Fig.
13:
C.M.,
15:
197
In the
concluding pages
of his
letter,
Le Tenneur discussed in
detail some of the
arguments
used
by
Fabri in his attack on
Galileo,
and in
particular
theorem 61 of book II.
Contrary
to
Fabri,
Le Tenneur was of the view that it was
quite possible
to
imagine
that a
moving body descending along
an inclined
plane
and an-
other in vertical free fall both
passed through
an
infinity
of de-
grees
of
speed, "although
the
parts
of
speed
are
larger
in the in-
clined
plane
than in the
perpendicular
line." As was in fact shown
by figure
13,
the infinite number of lines that could be drawn
parallel
to the base BC divided the cathetus AB and the
hypot-
enuse AC in
parts
of different sizes but
equal
in
number.'M
While Le Tenneur had no
qualms
about
admitting
that in vio-
lent or artificial
motion,
a
body
could in fact
jump immediately
from rest to a determinate
degree
of
speed,
he excluded that such
was the case with
naturally
accelerated motion.
In the Novarum observationum tomus
III,
Mersenne writes that Le
i32 Ibid., 178-182.
133
Ibid.,
195:
"[...]multiplicatis
in
qualibet proportione temporibus
con-
firmatur
semper
uniformis
spatiorum proportio,
nec oritur
unquam spatium
maius aut minus vero sive
augeantur tempora aequalia,
sive minuantur
[...].
Nec
invenietur maior ratio
quatuor spatiorum
ad duo
quam
duorum ad unum nec
orietur
spatium
minus aut maius vero:
[...],
sed omnia mirum in modum sibi
invicem cohaerere et consentire
reperiuntur."
134 Interestingly enough,
Le Tenneur's
reasoning
is
absolutely analogous
to
that used
by
Galileo in an
early
Latin draft of a theorem of the
Discorsi, which has
been
analyzed
in P.
Galluzzi,
Momento. Studi
galileiani (Rome, 1979),
360.
Tenneur had claimed that the odd-number law could be true even
if the
descending body
did not
pass through
infinite
degrees
of
speed.'35
While Mersenne's assessment
may
at first
sight
look mis-
taken,
a closer look at Le Tenneur's De motu naturaliter accelerato of
1649
(in
which his letter to Mersenne was
included)
will
clarify
this
claim.
In the third
part
of his De
motu,
which rebuts all
objections
com-
monly employed against
Galileo,
Le Tenneur writes that the
Florentine mathematician had
only managed
to
prove
that a fall-
ing body passed thorough
infinite
degrees
of
acceleration,
but not
that it
passed through
infinite
degrees
of
speed.
For should it
really
be the
case,
as Cazre had
suggested,
that all bodies have a "innate
speed
of a certain determinate
degree" ("nativa
celeritas certo
gradu determinata"),
this would
imply
that a
projectile
thrown
vertically upward
from E to A
(fig.
14),
even if
decelerating
in a
continuous manner,
would
yet
not
pass through
all
degrees
of slowness between
point
E
(from
where it is
thrown)
and
point
A
(where
the
impressed impetus
ceases to be
active).
But its innate
speed
AL would
remain,
and since it is ever divisible
to
infinity just
like
any quantity,
there would
always
remain infinite
degrees
of slowness still to be traversed
by
the
ascending body.'36
Still,
Le Tenneur is convinced that each
falling body actually
does
pass through
infinite
degrees
of
speed.
He observes that even if
bodies
possessed
a native
degree
of
speed,
this would
probably
consume itself
together
"with the
impressed impetus [...]
before
the ascent of the
upwardly
thrust
body
had
ended."''7
To this are
added two more
arguments
which
appeal
in different
ways
to the
principles
of the
simplicity
and
uniformity
of nature. The first ar-
gument
is based on the observation that nature
usually
does not
pass
"from one terminus to the other under omission of the
C
E
Fig.
14:
Le TenneL
De motu, s.]
135 Mersenne,
Novarum
observationum,
132:
"[...]
Clariss.
Tenneurius, amicus
singularis, scripto
nundum
vulgato [
sc. "De motu naturaliter
accelerato"]
refellit
[per
numeros naturales
progressionem],
ut &
priorem
eruditissima
epistola,
in
qua praesertim
illud
placet, quod
nostram illam
per
numeros
impares progres-
sionem
evincit, licet
gravia,
a
quiete
casum
inchoantia, non transirent
per
omnes
gradus
tarditatis."
16 J.
A. Le
Tenneur,
De motu naturaliter accelerato tractatus
physico-mathematicus
(Paris, 1649),
110:
"[...]
certe non transibit
[...]
per
omnes tarditatis
gradus
a
puncto proiectionis
E,
usque
ad
A,
punctum,
in
quo
cessat
quidem
omnis
impe-
tus
impressus,
at remanet nativa celeritas AL,
quae
cum sit adhuc divisibilis in
infinitum, sicut
quaelibet quantitas,
remanet adhuc infiniti tarditatis
gradus
a
gravi
ascendente
pertranseundi."
1'37 Ibid., 111.
middle."'38
The second invokes once more the
quality
of scalar
invariance which
only
Galileo's law
possesses:
It must needs be the case that the first
space
is to the second
space
like the
two first
spaces
to the two
subsequent
ones,
as has been shown
against
Fabri,
because we
obviously
need a
principle
of
uniformity
in natural events as
these need to
proceed
in an
uninterrupted
course. The
consequence
of this
is that
heavy
bodies have no innate
speed,
but that in
falling, they pass
through
all
degrees
of slowness and
speed."'9
In
sum,
mathematical coherence and
simplicity
were the two cri-
teria that in Le Tenneur's
eyes
indicated the
superiority
of
Galileo's
theory
of acceleration over those of Cazre and Fabri.
Le Tenneur was not the
only
one to rush to Galileo's defense.
Further letters of
support by
Torricelli and
Huygens
soon reached
Mersenne's convent. In
January
of
1645,
Mersenne had written to
Torricelli
explaining
that neither Roberval nor Descartes had been
convinced
by
the
validity
of the
"fundamentum
Galilaei"-again,
the idea that the
falling body passed through
infinite
degrees
of
speed
from its
original position
of
rest-believing
instead that the
B
E D
AC
Fig.
15:
C.M.,
13: 338
motion of fall initiated with a determinate
degree
of
speed.
Torricelli's answer was
very
terse. The Ital-
ian stated
simply
that he did not understand
how a
heavy body
could
jump
from rest to a
certain
degree
of
speed
without
passing
through
all intermediate
degrees.
And he
then furnished an additional
geometrical
argument (fig. 15):
for a
point proceeding
with uniform
speed
from B towards D it will
be
necessary,
before it reaches a distance
from the cathetus that is
equal
to
DE,
to traverse "omnes minoris
distantiae
gradus usque
in
infinitum."'140
Mersenne would continue to write occasional letters to Torri-
celli in which he formulated
physical objections
to the Galilean
theory
of accelerated motion.
But,
as Galluzzi has
shown,
the dis-
138
Ibid.,
112.
139 Ibid., 114: "Cum ergo debeat esse
necessario,
ut
primum spatium,
ad secun-
dum,
ita duo
priora
simul, ad duo
posteriora
simul, ut contra Fabrium ostensum
est,
ut nimirum servetur uniformitas in actionibus naturalibus,
quae
uno &
eodem
tenore
progredi
debent;
consequens
est
gravia
nullam habere nativam celerita-
tem, sed successive transire in descendendo
per
omnes tarditatis aut velocitatis
gradus."
140 Torricelli to
Mersenne, 27
January,
1645:
C.M.,
13: 338.
ciple
of Galileo was
highly unwilling
to be
dragged
into the de-
bate.'41
Greater satisfaction for the Minim was to be
gotten
from the still
very young
Christiaan
Huygens. Upon hearing
from
Constantijn
Huygens,
Sr.,
that his son had worked out a demonstration of the
odd-number
law,
Mersenne wrote to Christiaan on October
13,
1646,
describing
all the reasons for which he had come to believe
that the foundations of Galileo's science of motion were
wobbly.
As Dear has
observed,
these reasons had to do
only
with
physics.'42
Mersenne had
persuaded
himself that the
speed
of free fall
pos-
sessed both a natural maximum and a minimum: on the one
hand,
it was
impossible
for a
falling body
to exceed its natural
impetuos-
ity,
on the
other,
it was
necessary
that its fall
began
with a determi-
nate
speed.
And it was this second conviction that led him to re-
ject
the odd-number law:
Furthermore,
so as to maintain in the vacuum the
proportion
of odd num-
bers, it would be
necessary
that the
body passes through
all
degrees
of
speed
from the
beginning
of its
descent,
which doesn't
happen though
Galileo
thought so,
for the stone has
already
a certain
speed
when it
begins
its
fall.'43
It took
Huygens only
a few
days
to
respond,
and his answer was in
favor of the Galilean law of motion. Since he
agreed
with
Mersenne that the odd-number law was based on the
hypothesis
of the
passage
of the
falling body through
infinite
degrees
of
speed,
he
put
his
epistolary
efforts into
proving
this
hypothesis by
mathematical
means;
the odd-number
law,
he
tacitly
assumed,
would follow from this
proof.
He invited Mersenne "to concede" that
falling
bodies had to
accelerate in such a manner that the
space they
traversed in a first
interval of time of whatever size stood to the
space
traversed in a
second, identical,
interval of time in the same ratio as the
space
traversed
jointly
in the first two intervals to the
space
traversed
'4'
Galluzzi, "Gassendi,"
104.
142 Dear, Mersenne, 211.
'43
Mersenne to Christiaan
Huygens,
13 October, 1646, C.M.,
14: 539: "D'ai-
Ileurs il faudroit
pour garder
tousiours in vacuo la
proportion
des nombres im-
pairs, que
le
grave
tombast
par
tous les
degrez
de
tardivet6, depuis
le commence-
ment de sa
cheute,
ce
qui
ne se fait
pas quoy qu'aye pens6 Galil6e,
car
la
pierre
a desia une certaine vitesse, en
commen;ant
la cheute." On Mersenne's relation
to the
young
Christiaan
Huygens,
cf. A.
Beaulieu, "Christiaan
Huygen
et Mer-
senne
l'inspirateur,"
in
Huygens et
la France
(Paris, 1981),
25-31. The
exchange
of
letters between
Huygens
and Mersenne is also discussed in Galluzzi, "Gassendi,"
109-110; Dear, Mersenne, 212-214.
jointly
in the third and fourth interval. This essential
property
having
been
established,
Huygens
demonstrated that it could not
be satisfied
by any geometrical progression
and hence not even
by
Cazre's,
and that
among
the arithmetical
progressions, only
Galileo's,
but not
Fabri's,
was able to
satisfy
it.'44
Mersenne declared his admiration for the
"gentillesse"
of
Huygens'
demonstration. At the same
time,
he felt
compelled
to
confess that his
scruples
had not been
completely
eliminated. As
we shall see in the
concluding paragraph,
it was not a mathemati-
cal
proof
of the
validity
of Galileo's law of acceleration that
Mersenne was
seeking,
but a causal
explanation
from which that
law could be deduced. And this was
something
that neither Le
Tenneur nor Torricelli nor indeed
Huygens
were able to
supply
him with.
Mersenne's unresolved doubts
Mersenne's doubts
regarding
the
possibility
of
constructing
an
exact science of motion found their most detailed
expression
in
the Novarum observationum tomus III of 1647. In the
opening
lines
of
chapter
15,
which carries the title
"Variae
cogitationes
de casu
gravium
iterum
expensae,"
Mersenne confesses his
growing per-
plexity concerning
the
validity
of the same odd-number law that
he had once believed to have verified
empirically.
He narrates how
in recent
years
this law has been
valiantly
defended
by
Gassendi
and Le Tenneur who have with
cogent arguments
confuted both
Cazre's and Fabri's alternative laws.'45 But Mersenne adds that the
144 C.
Huygens
to
Mersenne, 28 October, 1646, C.M.,
14: 570-572. It must be
evident that the
argument employed by
the
young Huygens
is
very
similar to the
one we encountered above with Le Tenneur: both authors individuate in the
property
of scalar invariance the decisive
advantage
of the Galilean law over the
rivaling
laws. The
only
difference between
Huygens
and Le Tenneur
lies,
how-
ever,
in the
presentation
of this
argument. While
the
latter,
when
comparing
the
three
laws,
had found that Galileo's was the
only
one to
possess
this
property
and
therefore seemed to
satisfy
better the
principle
of the
uniformity
of
nature,
Huygens
behaves as if this
property
was some conditio sine
qua
non for
any
true
law of free fall and which
only
Galileo's can
satisfy.
Given that he does not
try
to
justify
in
any way
whatsoever
why
this
property
was
essential,
his
argument
has-
not
unjustly-been
accused of
circularity by
Nardi
("Spazi," 336-337)
and P.
Costabel
("Huygens
et la
mecanique.
De la chute des
corps
a la cause de la
pesanteur," in
Huygens et
la France
(Paris, 1981), 139-152,
esp. 140-141).
To
my
knowledge,
no one has so far drawn attention to the resemblance between the
arguments
of
Huygens
and Le Tenneur.
145
Mersenne, Novarum
observationum,
131-132.
defeat of these rivals is still not
equivalent
to a
victory
of the
Galilean law. He
praises
Le Tenneur's still
unpublished
math-
ematical
argument
in favor of the Galilean
law,
of which he offers
a
summary,
as a
very
shrewd
piece
of
reasoning,
but then
goes
on
to add that it
yet
has no
power
of demonstration
[...], just
as the reasons,
which have so far
been adduced in favor of the double motion of the
earth,
demonstrate noth-
ing,
as has been well stated
by
the Commentator of Aristarchus,
even
though
some
people
claim that it moves because of the
power
of the reasons that
seem to confirm it.146
The
passage
seems to involve the
following reasoning: Admittedly,
the Galilean
theory
of acceleration is more economical than either
Fabri's or
Cazre's,
in the same
way
in which the
Copernican theory
is more economical than the Ptolemaic model. But such a math-
ematical
advantage
does not entail the truth of the
theory,
at least
as
long
as there exists no
physical proof
of its
validity.
And
just
as
the rotation of the earth has not
yet
been
demonstrated,
so are we
still
expecting
the
physical proof
of Galileo's law.
These words also
signify
that Mersenne had
evidently
not been
convinced
by
Gassendi's
attempt
to
provide
a causal basis for the
Galilean law. This
may
at first
sight
seem all the more
surprising
as the
explanation
of acceleration offered in Gassendi's
Epistolae
de
proportione (1646)
showed a remarkable resemblance to the ex-
planation given
in Mersenne's own Harmonie universelle
(1636).
We
recall that both works
attempted
to
demonstrate,
with the
help
of
the double distance
rule,
that a
single
force
conferring upon
a
body
a new
degree
of
speed
in each moment was
capable
of
aug-
menting
"its
speed
in the
duplicate
ratio of the times." And both
works-Gassendi's with
greater
resolve,
Mersenne's in a more
hy-
pothetical
manner-allowed for the
possibility
that this force was
terrestrial attraction.
Moreover,
in Mersenne's Novarum observationum tomus
III,
we
find a mathematical
analysis
of the
growth
of
speeds,
times,
and
spaces
in uniform accelerated motion which bears at first
sight
a
close resemblance to the
explanations
offered both in Gassendi's
Epistolae
de
proportione
and in Mersenne's own
Harmonie
univer-
146
Mersenne, Novarum
observationum,
135:
"[...]
vim demonstrationis non
habere
[...] quemadmodum neque
rationes,
quae
hactenus allatae sunt in
gratiam
utriusque
motus terrae,
quidquam
demonstrant,
ut
optime
notavit Aristarchi
Commentator, etiam si
plures
vellent eam moveri, ob
rationum
praestantiam,
quae
id innuere videntur."
selle.47 But here the similarities end. For while the Mersenne of the
Harmonie had believed that his
analysis
was valid
irrespective
of
whether
heavy
bodies fell because of some internal
principle
or
because
they
were attracted
by
the
earth,
the old Mersenne
explic-
itly
denied the mathematical
equivalence
of these two
hypotheses.
In the Novarum observationum tomus
III,
he
argues, against
Fabri's
and Cazre's
impetus
theories,
that if it could be
proven
that the
motion of
heavy
bodies was
natural,
i.e.
produced by
an internal
cause,
there would be no reason for not
accepting
Galileo's law.
In the
contrary
case, however,
should it be discovered that bodies
are
propelled
downward
by
an external
force,
be it
by
subtle mat-
ter or
by
terrestrial
attraction,
one would have to search for an-
other law. 48
The reason
why
Mersenne had become convinced that it was
essential to know the cause
responsible
for free fall was that there
were
just
too
many
effects that defied
experimental
verification. In
order to be sure of the
validity
of the odd-number
law,
one would
in fact have to be able to ascertain:
i)
that
heavy
bodies
pass
through
infinite
degrees
of
speed-an assumption
whose truth
nobody
seems to be able to
demonstrate; ii)
that the
speed
of fall
increases
indefinitely--a
notion excluded
by adepts
of
geometry
who believe that each
body
has a maximum
velocity beyond
which
it cannot
accelerate;
and
iii)
that the
postulate
of the inclined
planes
on which Galileo had founded his entire
theory
of accel-
eration,
is indeed valid.
When he wrote his Novarum
observationum,
Mersenne must ob-
viously
have abandonned the
hope
he had
expressed
in the
Cogitata
of 1644 that the Cartesian
theory
of
gravity
would
yield
a
mathematical law. The above-mentioned three
requirements
show,
however,
that he had
completely
absorbed the
pars
destruens of
Descartes'
thought.
We recall in fact the latter's
charge
that
Galileo had founded his science of motion on an undemonstrated
postulate
as well as his belief that if the
falling body
was
propelled
by
an external force
acting by
contact,
its motion had to initiate
with a determinate
speed
and would not have been able to exceed
a certain limit.
147 Cf. ibid., 133-134. Here, as
already
in the
Harmonie
universelle and in the
Cogitata,
Mersenne bases his own
explanations
on the double distance rule.
"48 Ibid.,
136: "Promoveretur illa
sententia,
si
probaretur
motum illum
gravium
esse
naturalem;
sed cum
aliqui
contendant esse
violentum,
sive a
principio
externo,
quod numquam
descendant nisi adhibita vi materiae subtilis, ut antea
dictum
est,
vel attractione
terrae,
non est ex ea
parte promota"
We have also seen how in his letters to
Mersenne,
Descartes had
suggested
that the acceleration of fall was not
really
uniform,
since
the faster the
body
was
falling
the lesser was the additional
speed
conveyed
to it
by
the subtle matter.
Interestingly enough,
in the
Novarum observationum tomus
III,
Mersenne seems to
accept
even
this
grave objection
to Galileo's law. For he
writes,
albeit without
offering any explanation
for
it,
that the attractive force of the earth
would
only produce
a
decreasingly
accelerated motion:
Consider also that we still do not know whether
heavy
bodies are attracted
by
the earth or rather descend towards it because of some internal
urge.
If
they
are
attracted,
we shall have to
speak
rather
differently
about the
pro-
portion
of their descent than we have done earlier. For
[in
this
case],
after
having
crossed a certain
space, they
reduce their
speed.
For the first half of
the
earth,
through
which the bodies fall,
will strive to
pull
them down,
but
will not
pull
as hard as
they approach
the
center.'49
Mersenne himself cannot
say
which laws the
falling
bodies would
follow if
they
were attracted
by
the earth or
pushed by
subtle
matter. For in both
cases,
too
many
variables would come into
play.
Nor is he sure whether either of these
explanations
is to be
accepted.
The
only thing
he knows with
certainty
is that
if
either
of them were
correct,
Galileo's law could not be true. The
only
world in which the odd-number law rules over the fall of bodies is
one in which their fall is
produced by
an inner force. But
although
this is the
hypothesis
that
appears
to have been favored
by
Galileo,
Mersenne finds that he has no reasons for
accepting
it.
In his discussion of a
comparable
situation,
Richard Westfall has
once
spoken
of the
apparent incompatibility
between the demands
of mathematical
mechanics,
on the one
hand,
and those of the
mechanical
philosophy,
on
another."15
One feels that Mersenne
149
Mersenne, Novarum
observationum, 132: "Adde
quod
nondum scimus an
gravia potius
trahantur a
terra,
quam -ipsa proprio
nutu ad eam descendant:
quae
si
trahantur,
alio
penitus
modo de
proportione
casuum,
quam
antea dicendum
erit:
quippe post
certum
aliquod spatium percursum,
suam
deinceps
velocitatem
remittent,
cum
prima
terrae
medietas,
per quam
descendunt
gravia,
in iisdem
retrahendis
laboret,
vel non ita laboret in
trahendis,
cum ad centrum accedunt."
In a
page
of the Harmonie
universelle,
Mersenne refers to the
opinion
of some
people
who think
that,
if
falling
bodies were attracted
by
the
earth, they
would
fall
"plus
viste vers la surface de la
terre,
que
lors
qu'il
sont
plus
bas entre la sur-
face & le centre,
a raison
que
la terre entiere les tire vers le centre
quand
ils
tombent
par
l'air sur sa
surface,
&
qu'elle n'agit plus
toute
entiere, quand
ils
descendent sous
elle, dautant
que
toutes les
parties qui
sont sur les
poids,
les
retirent
'
elles tant
qu'elles peuvent [...]" (Mersenne,
Harmomie universelle,
1:
128).
But note that in the
Harmonie, Mersenne does not consider this
objection
to be
strong enough
to undermine the
validity
of Galileo's law.
150
R. S.
Westfall,
Force in Newton's
Physics (London, 1971),
47.
was
very
much aware of this tension. His "ambition to
push
forward
a
mathematically
certified kind of natural
philosophy"''5
was ham-
pered,
as it
were,
by
his
recognition
that the law of acceleration was
incompatible
with all
strictly
mechanistic models of acceleration.
Did this
recognition
result in that famous state of
'mitigated
scepticism'
which Richard
Popkin
has associated with
Mersenne,
defining
it as the awareness that
"necessary
truths about the nature
of
reality"
are
impossible
but that
"knowledge
in a lesser
sense,
as
convincing
or
probably
truths about
appearances"
are
possible?"52
In one
sense,
one
may
answer this
question
in the
positive,
for
Mersenne continued to believe that Galileo's
law,
despite
all the
uncertainty surrounding
it, was,
to use
Popkin's
words,
"for all
practical purposes,
verifiable and useful."'"5 But in another
sense,
the
story
of Mersenne's
growing scepticism
undermines
Popkin's
model and its neat distinction between unknown "ultimate causes
or real natures" and verifiable "effects and
appearances."'54
The
belief of the
'mitigated sceptic'
that
"knowledge
of effects is suffi-
cient"'55
does
certainly
fit Mersenne's
early
attitude. But we have
seen how our Minim
gradually
came to
recognize
that the "effects
and
appearances"
were themselves so
unclearly perceived,
so inex-
actly
measured,
and thus so
poorly
understood that it was
impos-
sible to
analyze
them unless one first had an
understanding
of the
"ultimate
causes." With
respect
to the
problem surrounding
Galileo's law of
fall,
Mersenne's
position
must in fact be said to
have
developed
from
'mitigated scepticism'
to 'radical
scepticism'.
ABSTRACT
This article
analyzes
the evolution of Mersenne's views
concerning
the
validity
of
Galileo's
theory
of acceleration. After
publishing,
in 1634, a treatise
designed
to
present empirical
evidence in favor of Galileo's odd-number
law,
Mersenne de-
veloped
over the
years
the
feeling
that
only
the elaboration of a
physical proof
could
provide
sufficient confirmation of its
validity.
In the
present
article,
I
try
to
show that at the center of Mersenne's worries stood Galileo's
assumption
that a
falling body
had to
pass
in its acceleration
through
infinite
degrees
of
speed.
His
extensive discussions with,
or his
reading
of, Descartes, Gassendi, Baliani, Fabri,
Cazre,
Deschamps,
Le
Tenneur,
Huygens,
and Torricelli led Mersenne to believe
that the
hypothesis
of a
passage through
infinite
degrees
of
speed
was
incompa-
tible with
any
mechanistic
explanation
of free fall.
5'
Dear, Mersenne, 211.
152 R. H. Popkin, The
History of Scepticism from
Erasmus to
Sponoza (Berkeley,
1979),
129.
153 Ibid., 140.
154 Ibid., 132.
155 Ibid.

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Infinite Degrees of Speed: Marin Mersenne and the Debate over Galileo's Law of Free Fall

Author(s): Carla Rita Palmerino

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