Raffaele Pisano – författare

This book offers insights relevant to modern history and epistemology of physics,

mathematics and, indeed, to all the sciences and engineering disciplines emerging

of 19th century. This research volume is the first of a set of three Springer books on

Lazare Nicolas Marguérite Carnot’s (1753–1823) remarkable work: Essay on Machines in

General (Essai sur les machines en général [1783] 1786). The other two forthcoming

volumes are: Principes fondamentaux de l’équilibre et du mouvement (1803) and

Géométrie de position (1803).

Lazare Carnot – l''organisateur de la victoire – in Essai sur le machine en général (1786)

development. Subsequently, his new coming science applied to machines attracted

considerable interest for technician, as well, already in the 1780’s. With no lack in

rigour, Carnot used geometric and trigonometric rather than algebraic arguments, and

usually went on to explain in words what the formulae contained. His main physical–

mathematical concepts were the Geometric motion and Moment of activity–concept of

Work . In particular, he found the invariants of the transmission of motion (by stating

the principle of the moment of the quantity of motion) and theorized the condition of

transmission of power).

While the core theme remains the theories and historical studies of the text, the book

contains an extensive Introduction and an accurate critical English Translation –

including the parallel text edition and substantive critical/explicative notes – of Essai

sur les machines en général (1786). The authors offer much-needed insight into the

relation between mechanics, mathematics and engineering from a conceptual, empirical

and methodological, and universalis point of view. As a cutting–edge writing by

leading authorities on the history of physics and mathematics, and epistemological

mathematicians and applied sciences and technology).

Evangelista Torricelli exemplifies the use the moderns made of the ancients'' mathematical methods. Celebrating Evangelista Torricelli''s monumental Opera geometrica, this book marks 380 years since its publication (1644-2024). This homage to Torricelli introduces the magnificent major work in Mechanics and Mathematics of a brilliant Archimedean–and–Galilean scientist to modern readers.

Opera geometrica deals with Motion & Mechanics and Geometry & Infinitesimals. In quibus Archimedis doctrina Torricelli also presents his mechanical principle of equilibrium – the foundation of the modern Principle of Virtual Work/Static.

This outstanding source and research book spotlights the relevance and originality of Torricelli’s Mechanics, and is the first and most profound analysis of the Opera geometrica to date. The historical study is achieved in extensive Introduction, 5 Essays and an accurate Transcription of Opera geometrica with parallel side–by–side text, including substantive explicative notes. The book is an accessible avenue to understanding this work by leading authorities who offer much-needed insights into the relationship Physics–Mathematics, Mechanics and Fundamentals. It appeals to historians, epistemologists and scientists.

The book gathers several contributions by historians of physics, philosophers of science and scientists as new essays in the history of physics ranging across the entire field, related in most instances to the works of Salvo D''Agostino (1921-2020), one of the field''s most prominent scholars since the second half of the past century. A phenomenon is an observable measurable fact, including data modelling, assumptions/laws. A mechanical phenomenon is associated to equilibrium/motion. Are all mechanisms mechanisms of a phenomenon? Scholars with different backgrounds discuss mechanism/phenomena from an historical point of view. The book is also devoted to understanding of causations of disequilibrium (shock, gravitational, attraction/repulsion, inertia, entropy, etc.), including changes/interaction in the framework of irregular cases of modern physics as well. The book is an accessible avenue to understanding phenomena, ideas and mechanisms by leading authorities who offer much-needed historical insights into the field and on the relationship Physics–Mathematics. It provides an absorbing and revealing read for historians, philosophers and scientists alike.

The aim of this book is to analyse historical problems related to the use of mathematics in physics as well as to the use of physics in mathematics and to investigate Mathematical Physics as precisely the new discipline which is concerned with this dialectical link itself. So the main question is: When and why did the tension between mathematics and physics, explicitly practised at least since Galileo, evolve into such a new scientific theory?

The authors explain the various ways in which this science allowed an advanced mathematical modelling in physics on the one hand, and the invention of new mathematical ideas on the other hand. Of course this problem is related to the links between institutions, universities, schools for engineers, and industries, and so it has social implications as well.

The link by which physical ideas had influenced the world of mathematics was not new in the 19th century, but it came to a kind of maturity at that time. Recently, much historical research has been done into mathematics and physics and their relation in this period. The purpose of the Symposium and this book is to gather and re-evaluate the current thinking on this subject. It brings together contributions from leading experts in the field, and gives much-needed insight in the subject of mathematical physics from a historical point of view.

Lazare Carnot was the unique example in the history of science of someone who inadvertently owed the scientific recognition he eventually achieved to earlier political prominence. He and his son Sadi produced work that derived from their training as engineering and went largely unnoticed by physicists for a generation or more, even though their respective work introduced concepts that proved fundamental when taken up later by other hands. There was, moreover, a filial as well as substantive relation between the work of father and son. Sadi applied to the functioning of heat engines the analysis that his father had developed in his study of the operation of ordinary machines. Specifically, Sadi''s idea of a reversible process originated in the use his father made of geometric motions in the analysis of machines in general.

This unique book shows how the two Carnots influenced each other in their work in the fields of mechanics and thermodynamics and how future generations of scientists have further benefited from their work.