706 william eamon
language—and archimedes. He also composed two original treatises on
artillery, Nova Scientia [new Science; 1537] and Quesiti et inventioni diverse
(1546). Tartaglia brought the world of the bombardier into the domain of
the philosophers, and by doing so not only codified gunners’ practices but
also unwittingly contributed to the reconstruction of natural philosophy.
Tartaglia’s stated purpose in writing the Nova Scientia was to “give
rules to the art of bombardiers.”19 cast in the form of a dialogue with “a
very expert bombardier,” the work begins as a reflection on the question:
at what inclination would an artillery piece fire the longest shot? Using
geometry, Tartaglia proved that a ball shot at 45 degrees maximizes the
product of the two motions and travels the furthest of any elevation. More
important, he recognized that cannons did not have to be tested at all ele-
vations or at all charges; instead, their trajectories could be geometrically
reproduced on the page by compasses. By putting gunshot on a predictive,
mathematical basis, Tartaglia challenged the aristotelian picture, giving
the problem of projectile motion a new urgency. in the hands of scientists
such as Galileo, the physics of projectiles provided a lever by which the
entire edifice of the aristotelian universe could be pulled down.
as a mediator between the world of the bombardier and that of the
scholar and administrator, Tartaglia illustrates the convergence of schol-
ars and craftsmen that historians have identified as being crucial to the
birth of experimental science. in a series of articles published in the 1940s,
edgar Zilsel argued that modern science was born from the union of aca-
demic learning and the practical activities of artisans. according to Zilsel,
a Marxist, craftsmen “were the real pioneers of empirical observation,
experimentation, and causal research.”20 Building upon Zilsel, Paolo rossi
argued that a radically new appraisal of labor and technical knowledge
appears in the writings of 16th-century humanists and engineers.21 reject-
ing the classical valuation of the mechanical arts as impure and base,
humanists praised the arts for their dignity and usefulness and insisted
that they were necessary subjects in the philosopher’s curriculum. More
recently, Pamela Smith has offered a new spin on the Zilsel thesis. like
Zilsel and rossi, Smith argues that the “new philosophy” of the 17th century
depended crucially upon the entry into the knowledge-making process of
19 For a partial english translation, see Stillman drake and i. e. drabkin, Mechanics in
Sixteenth-Century Italy (Madison, 1969), here quoting p. 68.
20 edgar Zilsel, “Sociological roots of Science,” American Journal of Sociology 47 (1941–
42), 551.
21 rossi, Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts, ch. 1.