The Unfinished Mechanics of Giuseppe Moletti: An Edition and English Translation of His Dialogue on Mechanics, 1576 and Cesare Cremonini: aspetti del pensiero e scritti. (Reviews).

W.R. Laird. The Unfinished Mechanics of Giuseppe Moletti: An Edition and English Translation of His Dialogue on Mechanics, 1576

Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 2000. xi + 222 pp. n.p. ISBN: 0-8020-4699-1.

Ezio Riondato and Antonino Poppi, eds. Cesare Cremonini: aspetti del pensiero e scritti

(Atti del Convegno di studio: Padova, 26-27 febbraio 1999.) 2 vols. Padua: Accademia Galilciana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti in Padova, 2000. Vol. 1:11 pensiero. 261 pp. Vol. 2: Fondi manoscritti e opere a stampa. 261 pp. n.p. ISBN: 0-8020-4699-1.

Today Guiseppe Moletti (1530-1588) and Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631) usually appear as minor figures in studies on Galileo. Moletti was mathematics tutor to Vincenzo Gonzaga, son of Duke Guglielmo of Mantua, until 1577 when he was appointed chair of mathematics at the University of Padua, a post he held until 1587; his successor was Galileo. The young Galileo had also consulted Moletti concerning his work on centers of gravity. Cremonini was Galileo's colleague, friend, and adversary at the University of Padua. He was a leading Aristotelian philosopher and in 1601 was appointed to the first chair in philosophy at the university. Cremonini was one of the scholars who refused to look through Galileo's telescope and became one of the models for Simplicio in Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems.

Readers of Renaissance Quarterly were first introduced to Moletti's Dialogue on Mechanics by Laird in 1987. Some of the issues he raised in that article are reintroduced in the current volume. For example, he reiterates his claim that the participants in the Dialogue could not be the young prince, his student, and the author, as generally assumed, but rather the duke and an interlocutor similar to Galileo's Sagredo. This argument reinforces his point that the Dialogue, written in Italian and limited in technical language, was intended for a courtly audience. Similarly, his references to the military usefulness of the science of mechanics were meant to attract that audience.

More importantly, Laird once again shows how Moletti was trying to establish Aristotelian mechanics on a firm geometrical basis. In particular, Moletti based his mechanics on the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanical Problems, which was probably written by Aristotle's pupil Strabo and became popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At Padua, Moletti lectured from the Mechanical Principles; Galileo followed him in this, too. But Moletti showed little understanding of Archimedes.

Like Galileo's dialogues, the Dialogue on Mechanics consists of conversations on consecutive days. Only Moletti's first day was complete. It contains passages concerning the definition of mechanics, its relationship to geometry, circular motion, and practical applications of mechanics. Interestingly, Moletti defends the Copernican thesis, but only as a hypothesis to save appearances. The second day contains discussions of the relationship between moving power and resistance and the need for something immobile from which motion can arise.

Laird shows that there are similarities between Moletti and Galileo. For example, he notes their common interest in exploring the relation between a mover and moved in both natural and violent motions and the application of a mechanical principle to the analysis of motion, although Galileo used Archimedes' hydrostatics rather than pseudo-Aristotelian circular motion. They both rejected the Aristotelian theory that the medium is the cause of projectile motion and considered the speeds of bodies falling along inclined planes and arcs of circles. Both discussed the cause of the acceleration of falling bodies. But Laird wisely refrains from suggesting that Galileo was particularly influenced by Moletti. What is important, according to Laird, is that these similarities suggest the common culture shared by mathematicians in the sixteenth century and give Galileo scholars a perspective from which to judge his uniqueness.

Laird's edition of the Dialogue on Mechanics is based on the only complete manuscript, which is not in Moletti's hand, and a fragment that is all that remains of his original draft. The edition of the Italian that Laird has prepared is easily usable, with a glossary of rare and archaic terms. Diagrams are clear, although there could have been better referencing of the diagrams between the introduction and the text. I had to look up the list of figures to find the diagram he was referring to in the introduction. The translation is accurate and reads smoothly, more so than the original; the translator seems to have spent more time on the text than the author. Curiously, however, Laird dropped the phrase "Your Highness" ( Vostra Altezza) after its first appearance although it is regularly used by Moletti in the original. A testament to modern democratic sensibilities?

The volumes on Cesare Cremonini primarily represent an attempt to spur interest in this very understudied philosopher. The first volume is the proceedings of a conference held in 1999 in honor of the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Galilean Academy of Sciences, Letters, and the Arts. Originally named the Paduan Academy, both Galileo and Cremonini were among its founders. The second volume lists manuscripts and printed editions of Cremonini's works in various libraries: Biblioteca Universitaria of Padua, Biblioteca Civica of Padua, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana of Venice, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, as well as manuscripts found in the libraries mentioned in Kristeller's Iter Italicum. An appendix by Giulio F. Pagallo also suggests that the manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Expositio in libros physicorum, usually attributed to Francesco Piccolomini, may be by Cremonini.

So much work needs to be done on Cremonini that much of the volume of the conference proceedings is also heuristic. Two of the papers from volume one are also bibliographical: Leen Spruit lists documents stemming from Cremonini's run-in with the Inquisition in Sant' Uffizio Romano, and Vassilios I. Tsiotras lists manuscripts of Commentaries on Aristotle's Logic by Cremonini's student, Theophilos Korydalleus. Antonio Antonioni describes an unedited commentary on Aristotle's doctrine of dreams; Mariarosa Davi draws attention to a manuscript on the immortality of the soul. Other papers deal with Cremonini's posthumous reputation. Heinrich Kuhn, author of the only monograph on Cremonini of which I am aware, Venetischer Aristotelismus am Ende der aristotelischen Welt: Aspekte der Welt und des Denkens des Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631) (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), writes about the various attributes ascribed to Cremonini over the centuries: blind (because of his refusal to agree with Galileo), skeptic, rationalist. Fra ncoise Charles-Daubert shows that even among the skeptics in the seventeenth century, who should have appreciated his support of philosophical freedom, Cremonini was deprecated because of his rejection of Copernicanism. Antonio Gamba views changing attitudes toward Cremonini through iconography. Other articles in the volume concentrate on individual works by Cremonini. The most extensive one, by Giulio Pagallo, looks at his treatise Tractatus de paedia, a work of hermeneutics that is based primarily on Aristotle's De partibus animalium. Pagallo sees this work as a departure from medieval commentaries on Aristotle. Most significantly, Pagallo finds pre-Cartesian subjectivism. Giuseppe Ongaro discusses Cremonini's support of Aristotle on innate heat against the Galenist Pompeo Caimo, and Antonio Daniele writes about the disputation among Cremonini, Alessandro Tassoni, and Giuseppe degli Aromatari over Petrarch and the authority of Aristotle's poetics. From a more political perspective, Maurizio Sangalli discuss es Cremonini's run-in with the Inquisition and Venice's protection of its celebrity philosopher from prosecution. Finally, Lucia Rossetti looks at Cremonini's relationship to the German nation at Padua.

Both Moletti and Cremonini were important members of the scholarly community in Italy of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and without more extensive studies of these individuals, we cannot have a comprehensive vision of that community. The volumes under discussion are consequently very useful in filling serious lacunae.