Mersenne’s Universal Harmony

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pesic
Keyword(s):  
Speed Of Sound ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Web Browsers ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Detailed Treatment ◽  
Robert Fludd ◽  
Inclined Planes

Music was completely central for the natural philosophy of Mersenne. This chapter begins with his musical arguments for heliocentrism, against the hermetist Robert Fludd. Mersenne’s Harmonie Universelle shows the closest relation between practical music, its theory, and natural philosophy. In it, he was able to reach certain results well before Galileo Galilei. Mersenne presented musical devices to make pioneering measurements of the frequency of vibrating strings and of the speed of sound. His detailed treatment of the mechanics of falling bodies, inclined planes and pendulums supported and enabled his ensuing deductions about vibrating bodies, which extended Descartes’s work. Mersenne’s understanding of overtones both profited from and struggled with his musical preconceptions, as did his attempt to incorporate atomism into his account of vibrating bodies. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Music and the Origins of Ancient Science

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pesic
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Arithmetic Geometry ◽  
Web Browsers ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Ancient Science

Music entered deeply into the making of modern science because it was a crucial element of ancient natural philosophy, through which it thereafter remained active well into the formation of the “new philosophy” during the seventeenth century. The Pythagorean connection between music, numbers, and the sensual world remained potent in the quadrivium, the four-fold study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music that was the centerpiece of higher education until about the eighteenth century. This chapter surveys the ongoing connection between music and its sister sciences in the quadrivium from Plato and the Pythagoreans to Nicomachus and Boethius. The mythical story of Pythagoras in the blacksmith shop arguably represents the earliest recorded experiment, in the later sense of that word. Ancient Greek distinctions between number and magnitude were crucial elements in the unfolding interaction between arithmetic, geometry, and music. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Young’s Musical Optics

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pesic
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Wave Theory ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Scientific Instrument ◽  
Web Browsers ◽  
Acoustic Analogy ◽  
Wave Nature ◽  
Light Waves ◽  
Leonhard Euler ◽  
Optical Phenomena

Building on the work of Leonhard Euler, Thomas Young advanced the wave theory of sound and light. This chapter describes how Young found his way to music against the strictures of his Quaker milieu. His new-found passions for music and dance informed his studies of sound and languages. His early work on the accommodation of the eye remained a touchstone for his later scientific development. At many points, his understanding of sound influenced and shaped his approach to light, including the decisive experiments that established its wave nature. His early investigations into the sounds of pipes led him to make an acoustic analogy that could explain optical phenomena such as Newton’s rings. He introduced a new system of temperament and used the piano as a scientific instrument. His comprehensive Lectures on Natural Philosophy included many plates that juxtaposed acoustic and optical phenomena. When Young turned to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics, he relied on sound and phonology. His final suggestions about the transverse nature of light waves again turned on the comparison with sound. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

scholarly journals A Short Walk along the Gravimeters Path

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iginio Marson
Keyword(s):  
Gravity Force ◽  
Interested Reader ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Terrestrial Gravity ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Gravity Measurements ◽  
History Of ◽  
Inclined Planes ◽  
Short Walk

The history of gravity measurements begun in 1604 with Galileo Galilei experiments on the acceleration due to the gravity force of the earth,g, along inclined planes. In his memory, the most used unit to measuregis the gal (10−2 m/s2). The paper takes the interested reader through a walk along some of the most important achievements in gravity measurements and gives some perspectives for future developments in terrestrial gravity.

Kingdoms of Heaven: Galileo and Sarpi on the Celestial

2009 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Reeves
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Philosophy And Religion

The astronomical and cosmological views of Galileo Galilei and Paolo Sarpi, while emerging from years of shared observation and discussion, underwent striking differences in presentation in 1610, when telescopic discoveries first received widespread public attention. Such differences can be ascribed to divergent notions of the deployment of natural philosophy and religion.

Introduction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pesic
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Web Browsers ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Erwin Panofsky ◽  
The Common ◽  
Modes Of Thought

This book questions the common presupposition that music is conceptually derivative or secondary compared to other modes of thought. This chapter outlines eighteen case studies in which developments in music preceded and arguably influenced subsequent developments in mathematics and physical science. Attempts to make such broad-reaching connections should be circumspect, as should apply to sweeping claims advanced by Erwin Panofsky (about styles in visual art influencing Galileo Galilei) and Stillman Drake (about music as the “mother” of modern science). With that caution in mind, this book argues that, in whatever direction its interventions tended, music so deeply and persistently affected the development of science over so many historical vicissitudes that we should tell their stories jointly. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Second Ennead

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kalligas
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Everyday Experience ◽  
Psychological Issues ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Detailed Treatment ◽  
The World

This chapter presents the English translation of Paul Kalligas’s commentary on the second Enneads of Plotinus. The second Ennead deals with “natural philosophy, including the physical universe and subjects connected with it” (VP 24.37–39). Because Plotinus is generally thought to have had little interest in the workings of the sensible world, it is not surprising that this part of his work has attracted relatively little attention on the part of modern scholarship. However, a careful reading of its contents reveals its crucial importance for understanding his philosophy as a whole. The reason is that it includes a series of detailed studies in conceptual analysis, which may serve as a kind of toolbox for reading the rest of his work and for understanding its logical structure and architecture. And, after all, both his complex metaphysical theories and his detailed treatment of psychological issues are in the last analysis meant to provide explanations of the functioning of the world of our common, everyday experience. We thus also come to appreciate better the reasons for his conflict with the Gnostics, who refused to see the sensible world as anything but a place of depravity and corruption.

Descartes’s Musical Apprenticeship

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Pesic
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Continuum Theory ◽  
Web Browsers ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Physical Problems ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Mathematics And Physics

René Descartes began his career writing about music, which affected his innovative natural philosophy throughout its development. His first book was about music, addressed to another natural philosopher interested in it, Isaac Beeckman. In this book, Descartes used music as an exemplar of the approach he would take to mathematics and physics. This book remained important in Descartes’s correspondence with Marin Mersenne, which included musical as well as scientific topics. This chapter reads this lengthy correspondence as showing the interaction between musical, mathematical, and philosophical themes in Descartes’s work. Musical observations led to Descartes’s initial observations of the overtones of vibrating strings, which in turn led to wider consideration of mechanics, motion in a vacuum, and eventually to his continuum theory of the universe. This chapter argues that Descartes’s rejection of the vacuum came in the context of musical-physical problems. Descartes’s theories emerged in constant dialogue with musical issues and problems. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Response to “Oil-Based Gel Phantoms and the Speed of Sound”

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (11) ◽  
pp. 3172
Author(s):  
Natasha Alves ◽  
Brian K. Courtney
Keyword(s):  
Speed Of Sound
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