Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Department I
Diagram on folio 155 recto of Galileo’s
notes on motion (Ms. Gal. 72). A crucial
part of the construction, not revealed by
the original diagram (lower-right), has
been reconstructed (upper-left).
Each color represents the construction
necessary to find one of the five points d,
Z, Y, X and W (marked but not lettered in
the diagram). According to this interpretation
Galileo constructed these points such
that, after initial fall through the vertical
ab, they are reached in the same time
The fourth study The Evolution of Mechanics: A Study in the Long-term Development
of Knowledge articulates more extensively the theoretical foundations of a historical
epistemology of mechanics, provides an outline of the long-term development of
mechanical knowledge, and offers an outlook on further research activities within the
epistemological framework adopted by Project I. The theoretical foundations of the
study draw on research results from various disciplines. They comprise, in particular,
a conceptual structure that relates the social settings and material conditions of the
development and transmission of mechanical knowledge to its cognitive structures
and functions. This conceptual structure allows the methodological problems to be
solved that arise from an integration of research results from different disciplinary
approaches. The theoretical framework adopted makes it also possible to analyze
and make explicit the relations between diverse forms of mechanical knowledge that
have hitherto been mostly treated in isolation from each other. Among these different
forms is the intuitive knowledge gained through basic material activities, the profes-
sional knowledge of practitioners, and the theoretical knowledge resulting from the
reflection of various forms of knowledge in the context of scientific theories. On this
basis it is thus possible to reconstruct the long-term history of mechanics. Major
steps that are treated are:
30 MPIWG ReseaRch RePoRt 2006– 2007
· the origins of mechanical knowledge in elementary mechanical
technologies of indigenous cultures on a stone-age level;
· the development of sophisticated machines in early civilizations;