Paolo Galluzzi – författare

The Renaissance was not just a rebirth of the mind. It was also a new dawn for the machine.When we celebrate the achievements of the Renaissance, we instinctively refer, above all, to its artistic and literary masterpieces. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the Italian peninsula was the stage of a no-less-impressive revival of technical knowledge and practice. In this rich and lavishly illustrated volume, Paolo Galluzzi guides readers through a singularly inventive period, capturing the fusion of artistry and engineering that spurred some of the Renaissance’s greatest technological breakthroughs.Galluzzi traces the emergence of a new and important historical figure: the artist-engineer. In the medieval world, innovators remained anonymous. By the height of the fifteenth century, artist-engineers like Leonardo da Vinci were sought after by powerful patrons, generously remunerated, and exhibited in royal and noble courts. In an age that witnessed continuous wars, the robust expansion of trade and industry, and intense urbanization, these practitioners—with their multiple skills refined in the laboratory that was the Renaissance workshop—became catalysts for change. Renaissance masters were not only astoundingly creative but also championed a new concept of learning, characterized by observation, technical know-how, growing mathematical competence, and prowess at the draftsman’s table.The Italian Renaissance of Machines enriches our appreciation for Taccola, Giovanni Fontana, and other masters of the quattrocento and reveals how da Vinci’s ambitious achievements paved the way for Galileo’s revolutionary mathematical science of mechanics.

This book offers the English translation of 'Momento. Studi Galileiani', the most comprehensive and rigorously documented account of the process through which Galileo, having revealed the limitations of traditional theories of motion and weight, developed a new science of mechanics and dynamics. It traces how, in the midst of the Scientific Revolution, the tension between inherited doctrines and innovative inquiry led to a radical transformation in the conception of nature and its laws. By examining the evolution of scientific terminology and its conceptual implications, the book shows how Galileo’s mathematical approach reshaped the understanding of motion and natural processes, while confronting the intellectual resistance of his time. Combining detailed historical reconstruction with methodological insight, this study provides a crucial resource for scholars of early modern science, the history of physics and mathematics, epistemology, and the development of scientific language.