A Non-Astronomical Image in an Astronomical Text: Visualizing Motion in Riccioli's Almagestum Novum

For Riccioli's long-term interest in astronomy, see Dinis Alfredo , “Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the science of his time”, in Jesuit science and the Republic of Letters , ed. by Feingold Mordechai (Cambridge, 2003), 195–224, pp. 198–9. On Riccioli's biography and intellectual pursuits, see the preceding, as well as Baldini Ugo , “La formazione scientifica di G. B. Riccioli”, in Copernico e la questione copernicana in Italia dal XVI al XIX secolo , ed. by Pepe Luigi (Florence, 1996), 123–82, and Giambattista Riccioli e il merito scientifico dei Gesuiti nell'Eta Barocca, ed. by Borgato Maria Teresa (Florence, 2002).

Dinis , “Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the science of his time” (ref. 1), 198.

Baldini , “La formazione scientifica di G. B. Riccioli” (ref. 1), 132, 176.

Borgato Maria Teresa , “Riccioli e la caduta dei gravi”, in Borgato (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 1), 79–118, pp. 82–3.

Dinis , “Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the science of his time” (ref. 1), 198.

Riccioli's colleagues were less concerned with his discussions of controversial topics, such as Copernicanism, but more worried that, given the high calibre of scholarship produced by Riccioli's predecessors, including Tycho and Kepler, Riccioli was not sufficiently competent to produce a work that would honour the Society. Heilbron J. L. , The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as solar observatories (Cambridge, 1999), 87. On Riccioli's subsequent interactions with Catholic authorities, see Preti Cesare , “Riccioli e l'Inquisizione”, in Borgato (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 1), 213–49.

Heilbron , The Sun in the Church (ref. 6), 88.

For a summary and refutation of these interpretations, see Dinis , “Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the science of his time” (ref. 1), 195.

For these new approaches to Riccioli, see the works cited in ref. 1.

Bailey Gauvin Alexander , “‘Le style jésuite n'existe pas’: Jesuit corporate culture and the visual arts”, in The Jesuits: Cultures, sciences, and the arts, 1540–1773 , ed. by O'Malley John W. (Toronto, 1999), 38–89, pp. 38, 71–3; Levy Evonne , Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley, 2004); and Praz Mario , Studies in seventeenth-century imagery (Rome, 1964), 173f. On Jesuit frontispieces and titlepages, see Rice Louise , “Jesuit thesis prints and the festive academic defence at the Collegio Romano”, in O'Malley (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 10), 148–69. There have been many studies of the frontispieces of individual Jesuits; see, for example, Remmert Volker R. , “‘Docet parva pictura, quod multae scripturae non dicunt’: Frontispieces, their functions, and their audiences in seventeenth-century mathematical sciences”, in Transmitting knowledge: Words, images, and instruments in early modern Europe , ed. by Kusukawa Sachiko Maclean Ian (Oxford, 2006), 239–70, pp. 241–9; Remmert Volker R. , “Picturing Jesuit anti-Copernican consensus: Astronomy and biblical exegesis in the engraved title-page of Clavius's Opera mathematica (1612)”, in The Jesuits II: Cultures, sciences, and the arts, 1540–1773 , ed. by O'Malley John W. (Toronto, 2006), 291–313; and Tomasi Lucia Tongiori , “Il simbolismo delle immagini: I frontespici delle opere di Kircher”, in Enciclopedismo in Roma Barocca: Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e museo scientifico , ed. by Casciato Maristella Ianniello Maria Grazia Vitale Maria (Venice, 1986), 165–85.

On stylization of early modern astronomical images, see Pantin Isabelle , “L'illustration des livres d'astronomie à la Renaissance: L'évolution d'une discipline à travers ses images”, in Immagini per conoscere: Dal Rinascimento alla Rivoluzione Scientifica , ed. by Meroi Fabrizio Pogliano Claudio (Florence, 2001), 3–41. See also Pantin Isabelle , “Kepler's Epitome: New images for an innovative book”, in Kusukawa Maclean (eds), op. cit. (ref. 10), 217–37, pp. 226–8.

Riccioli , Almagestum novum (Bologna, 1651), Part 2, 203–6. Riccioli's treatment of the lunar surface remained the foremost source of information on the subject for more than 150 years. See Whitaker Ewen A. , Mapping and naming the Moon: A history of lunar cartography and nomenclature (Cambridge, 1999), 60–8.

Riccioli , Almagestum novum (ref. 12), Part 2, 96.

On this new visual code, see Pantin , “Kepler's Epitome” (ref. 11), 228. For the introduction of such naturalistic representations into astronomy, particularly with reference to Galileo's early astronomical work, see Winkler Mary G. Van Helden Albert , “Representing the heavens: Galileo and visual astronomy”, Isis , lxxxiii (1992), 195–217.

Riccioli , Almagestum novum (ref. 12), Part 2, 384.

Riccioli , Almagestum novum (ref. 12), Part 2, 56, 84.

On Riccioli's evolving evaluation of Copernicanism, see Dinis Alfredo , “Was Riccioli a secret Copernican?”, in Borgato (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 1), 49–77, and Dinis , “Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the science of his time” (ref. 1).

For discussion of Riccioli's experiments, see Borgato , “Riccioli e la caduta dei gravi” (ref. 4); Koyré Alexandre , “A documentary history of the problem of fall from Kepler to Newton”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society , xlv (1955), 329–95; Meli Domenico Bertoloni , Thinking with objects: The transformation of mechanics in the seventeenth century (Baltimore, 2006), 131–4; and Dear Peter , Discipline and experience: The mathematical way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1985), 76–85.

For Copernicus's summary and response to these ancient arguments, see Copernicus Nicolaus , De revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543), Book 1, chaps. 7–8. English translations include On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, transl. by Wallis C. G. (Annapolis, 1939), On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres, transl. by Duncan A. M. (London, 1976), and On the revolutions, transl. by Rosen Edward (Baltimore, 1992).

Galluzzi Paolo , “Gassendi e l'Affaire Galilée delle leggi del moto”, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana , lxxii (1993), 86–119; Galluzzi Paolo , “Gassendi and l'Affaire Galilée of the laws of motion”, in Galileo in context , ed. by Renn Jürgen (Cambridge, 2001), 239–75. The episode is also discussed by Koyré, op. cit. (ref. 18); Meli Bertoloni , Thinking with objects (ref. 18), chap. 4; Dear , Discipline and experience (ref. 18), chap. 5; Drake Stillman , “Free fall from Albert of Saxony to Honoré Fabri”, Studies in history and philosophy of science , v (1975), 347–66; and Carla Rita Palmerino in multiple contributions, including “Infinite degrees of speed: Marin Mersenne and the debate over Galileo's law of free fall”, Early science and medicine, iv (1999), 269–328, “Two Jesuit responses to Galilei's science of motion: Honoré Fabri and Pierre Le Cazre”, in Feingold (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 1), 187–228, and “Galileo's theories of free fall and projectile motion as interpreted by Pierre Gassendi”, in The reception of the Galilean science of motion in seventeenth-century Europe, ed. by Palmerino C. R. Thijssen J. M. M. H. (Dordrecht, 2004), 137–64.

On the Jesuit Giuseppe Biancani's engagement with Galileo's 1612 publication in his Aristotelis loca mathematica (Bologna, 1615), see de Ceglia Francesco Paolo , “Additio illa non videtur edenda : Biancani Giuseppe , reader of Galileo in an unedited censored text”, in Feingold (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 1), 159–86. On the formative influence of Biancani and his publications on Riccioli, see Dinis , “Was Riccioli a secret Copernican?” (ref. 17), 52–4.

Winkler Mary G. Van Helden Albert have commented on the absence of naturalistic images in Galileo's later writings, arguing that Galileo abandoned the type of visual images found in his Sidereus nuncius and letters on the sunspots in order to distance himself from the mechanical arts. See Winkler Van Helden , op. cit. (ref. 14).

Almost all images used in these responses are geometrical. One exception is a realistic rendition of a hanging balance in Gassendi's Pierre Tres epistolae de proportione, qua gravia decidentia accelerantur (Paris, 1646). For a discussion of Gassendi's text and image, see Palmerino , “Two Jesuit responses” (ref. 20).

For more examples of this genre of image and the practical mathematical tradition, see Heilbron J. L. , Geometry civilized (Oxford, 1998), 143–73. In the context of projectiles and artillery, see Büttner Jochen , “The challenging images of artillery: Practical knowledge at the roots of the Scientific Revolution”, in The power of images in early modern science , ed. by Lefèvre Wolfgang Renn Jürgen Schoepflin Urs (Basel, 2003), 3–27.

Galilei Galileo , Operations of the geometric and military compass (1606), transl. by Drake Stillman (Washington, DC, 1978), 84.

Riccioli , Almagestum novum (ref. 12), Part 2, 385.

“IX. Esto in sequenti diagrammate Turris truncus crassior IBCD, super basi ferè cubica VYZX, multò crassiore quàm est turris truncus, ex qua basi eminet parapegma YZH, cancellis lapideis latioribus circumseptum, ut securè circa turrim per ipsum ambulare possint sex saltem homines simul in eâdem serie inter cancellos & turrim: Supernè autem eminet coronis BC, rostratis cancellis lapideis circumsepta, ita ut ex cancellis G, Φ, O, tanquam ex fenestris secur possit quilibet ordinariæ staturæ homo despicere, & perpendiculo inde demisso usque ad pavimentum parapegmatis ID, metiri, ut nos non semel fecimus, altitudinem GI, quam, ut dixi, nacti sumus pedum Romanorum antiquorum 280. reliqua tum calamis, tum etiam totam per Altimetriam cum P. Grimaldo mensi sumus”, Riccioli , Almagestum novum (ref. 12), Part 2, 385.

Kusukawa Sachiko , “The uses of pictures in the formation of learned knowledge: The cases of Leonhard Fuchs and Andreas Vesalius”, in Kusukawa Maclean (eds), op. cit. (ref. 10), 73–96, pp. 73–7, 92–6. On the reuse of early modern lunar drawings in the seventeenth century, see van de Vyver O. , “Original sources of some early lunar maps”, Journal for the history of astronomy , ii (1971), 86–97.

“Huiusmodi ergo Turris opportunitates maximas ad id negotium habet; nam globi ex fenestris G, Φ, O, dimissi cadunt perpendiculariter in pavimentum ID, nec impigentes in pedem turris, nec extra cancellos YZ, decidentes: Deinde non est opus prohibere quemquam ne transeat per plateam basi ipsius circumstratam, interim dum globi ex coronide dimittuntur, sed absq. ullius periculo possunt spe ac sæpius dimitti. habet prætereà cingula quædam ferrea circa F & T, cum fibulis ferreis, oppositos muros constringentibus, quibus usi sumus pro terminis mensurandi intervallum residuum conficiendum à globo quando pervenerat in T, vel in F”, Riccioli , Almagestum novum (ref. 12), Part 2, 385.

Riccioli , Almagestum novum (ref. 12), Part 2, 385–6. This method of independently recording personal observations for later comparison and verification was used by other astronomers in their observations of the heavens. See, for example, the account of Kepler's telescopic observations of the satellites of Jupiter in Van Helden Albert , “Telescopes and authority from Galileo to Cassini”, Osiris, n.s., ix (1994), 8–29.

On the transition from “experience” to “experiment”, see Baroncini Gabriele , Forme di esperienza e rivoluzione scientifica (Biblioteca di Nuncius Studi e Testi, ix; Florence, 1992); Daston Lorraine , “Baconian facts, academic civility, and the prehistory of objectivity”, in Rethinking objectivity , ed. by Megill Allan (Durham, 1997), 37–63; Gaukroger Stephen , Explanatory structures: A study of concepts of explanation in early physics and philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1978); Schmitt Charles B. , “Experience and experiment: A comparison of Zabarella's view with Galileo's in De motu”, Studies in the Renaissance, xvi (1969), 80–138; and Dear , Discipline and experience (ref. 18).

The techniques of rendering experimental reports credible are well-documented by Steven Shapin in his “Pump and circumstance: Robert Boyle's literary technology”, Social studies of science , xiv (1984), 481–519, and A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago, 1994); and, with Schaffer Simon , Leviathan and the air-pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life (Princeton, 1985). Also see Dear Peter , “Totius in verba : Rhetoric and authority in the early Royal Society”, Isis, lxxvi (1985), 145–61, and Discipline and experience (ref. 18). For the legal origins of this phenomenon, see Shapiro Barbara J. , A culture of fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, 2000).

On the role of visual representations in virtual witnessing, see Shapin , “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 32), 491–4, and Shapin Schaffer , op. cit. (ref. 32), 22–79. On virtual witnessing in telescopic observations, see Van Helden, “Telescopes and authority” (ref. 30).

Shapin , “Pump and circumstance” (ref. 32), 491.

Readers, even those outside of Italy, most likely would have recognized this resemblance between Riccioli's image and the real Tower of Asinelli. The many towers of Bologna, including that of Asinelli, were regularly depicted in maps of Bologna, including Braun Georg Hogenberg Franz , Civitates orbis terrarum (Cologne, 1572–1617).

See ref. 20.

“Quoy qu'il en soit, il est impossible d'en faire les experiences, qui conuainquent du contraire, dautant que quelques hauteurs que l'on prouue, la difference des vistesses sera si petite, que nulle industrie humaine ne la peut apparceoir …”, Mersenne Marin , Harmonie universelle contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique (Paris, 1636), Part 1, Book 2, 94–5. On the context of Mersenne's remark, which was made in reference to Galileo's Dialogo, see Koyré , op. cit. (ref. 18). For a more extensive discussion of Mersenne's engagement with Galileo's work on motion, see Garber Daniel , “On the frontlines of the Scientific Revolution: How Mersenne learned to love Galileo”, Perspectives on science , xii (2004), 135–63; Meli Domenico Bertoloni , “The role of numerical tables in Galileo and Mersenne”, Perspectives on science , xii (2004), 164–90; Palmerino , “Infinite degrees of speed” (ref. 20); Raphael Renée , “Galileo's Discorsi and Mersenne's Nouvelles pensées: Mersenne as a reader of Galilean ‘experience’”, Nuncius , xxiii (2008), 7–36.

In a letter to Galileo dated 23 April 1632, Baliani wrote, “Io riceverei a gran favore che V.S. mi desse conto del modo con che ha ritrovato che il grave scende per cento braccia in cinque secondi. Altre volte io tentai l'impresa per mezzo di una palla attaccata ad una funicella tanto longa, che le sue vibrationi durassero un secondo per aponto, nè mi è sin hora riuscito ritrovar qual sia la longhezza precisa della fune. Mi manca poi la torre sì alta. Habbiamo quella del porto della lanterna: Però ha un risalto nel mezzo, che rende l'operatione dificile. So che nel primo secondo ha da scender quattro braccia; ma non credo l'esperienza esser sicura, se non vien fatta in maggior altezza”, Galilei Galileo , Le opere di Galileo Galilei , ed. by Favaro Antonio (Florence, 1890–1909), xiv, 343–4. Later letters continue these themes. See, for example, ibid., xviii, 68–71, 75–9, 86–8, 93–5. This episode is discussed in Meli Bertoloni , Thinking with objects (ref. 18), 110–11, and Drake Stillman , Galileo at work (Chicago, 1978), 306, 336, 399.

One of the traditional achievements of the Scientific Revolution is typically taken to be the abolition of Aristotle's division between the terrestrial and celestial realm and Newton's unification of terrestrial and celestial mechanics. Specific discussions of the relevance of mechanics to astronomy can be found, for example, in Clavelin Maurice , The natural philosophy of Galileo , transl. by Pomerans A. J. (Cambridge, 1974), and Meli Bertoloni , Thinking with objects (ref. 18), chaps. 3, 5, 7, 9.

Classic accounts of early modern mechanics include Koyré Alexandre , Galileo studies , transl. by Mepham John (Hassocks, 1978), and Westfall Richard , Force in Newton's physics: The science of dynamics in the seventeenth century (London, 1971). For more recent treatment, see Damerow Peter , Exploring the limits of preclassical mechanics (New York, 2004). For an overview that focuses on practitioners' practical experience with the everyday objects of mechanical investigation mentioned above, see Meli Bertoloni , Thinking with objects (ref. 18).