OBSERVING, TESTING, AND (RE)MEASURING: THE ACCADEMIA DEL CIMENTO¿S EXPERIMENTAL ACTIVITY (1657-1667)

This PhD thesis investigates the substantial experimental work of the Accademia del Cimento, which was active in Florence between 1657 and 1667 under the patronage of Leopoldo de' Medici. Only a fraction of the over one thousand experiments conducted by the Academy was included in the Saggi di Naturali Esperienze (1667), the Cimento’s only official publication. To comprehensively reconstruct the experimental agenda, this study examines the manuscript ‘diaries’ of the academic sessions, preserved in the Galilean Collection at the National Central Library of Florence. These, together with experimental miscellanea and letters exchanged between academicians, external correspondents, and members of the Medici family, allow for a detailed exploration of the wide range of observations carried out in the rooms of Palazzo Pitti in Florence, where the scholars used to gather. By consulting part of these diaries, which remain unpublished today, historian Edward Knowles Middleton wrote the first seminal work on the Cimento's activities in 1971, with the aim of restoring the Academy’s significance in the scientific landscape of the second half of the seventeenth century, not only in Italy but also across Europe. The main objective of this thesis is to expand Middleton's account by incorporating a larger number of sources to demonstrate the intrinsic importance of the Cimento’s experimental work, which was neither secondary to philosophical theories nor peripheral to the historical narrative of the Academy. The first part of the thesis includes a quantitative analysis of the experiments recorded during the academic sessions. The reading and transcription of the diaries led to the creation of an Excel database containing information concerning over a thousand experiments carried out in Florence between 1657 and 1667. This database, presented in the first chapter, Observation-experimentation processes, represents the most original aspect of the research, providing a new resource for studying the Academy’s practices. The second chapter, Ordering the study of nature, explains the rationale behind proposing a classification of the experiments. This taxonomic effort, once integrated into the database, provides a statistical overview of the key interests and research areas of the Cimento. Factors ranging from educational frameworks to book catalogues, the organization of experiments in private registers to their presentation in public texts, justify this proposal despite the complexities involved. The three main categories identified – Natural Philosophy, Mixed Mathematics, and Alchemy/Chemistry – are presented in the third chapter, Proposing a model for experiment classification, and serve as a guide for investigating groups of observations that share specific characteristics. This work not only approaches the Cimento’s activity through a quantitative study, but also focuses on certain groups of experiments with a qualitative approach. The second part of the thesis is therefore dedicated to three experimental areas that have been overlooked (or only partially studied) by historiography: the science of sound, the science of light, and the science of motion. The aim is to reconstruct the origins of these experiments, the underlying philosophical theories, the academicians involved (in some cases resolving historiographical issues of authorship and anonymity), methodologies, and the role of scientific instruments employed, along with both collaborative and contentious efforts and other previously unknown aspects of these activities. In the fourth chapter, The science of sound, the Florentine experiments on sound propagation in air and the estimation of its speed are discussed. Conducted before the establishment of the Cimento at the request of Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici for practical purposes, they were not replicated during the Cimento’s academic sessions. However, these experiments laid the foundation for the Academy's later investigations into sound propagation in water and vacuums, aligning with broader European interests in natural philosophy. The fifth chapter, The science of light, follows a similar structure and examines the Cimento’s work in experimental optics. The observations concern refraction and reflection of light, attempts to measure its speed in the wake of Galileo, using smoke signals and even geometric methods. The chapter also introduces three series of experiments published in the Saggi, at the intersection of optics, chemistry, and alchemy: the combustion of substances through light reflection, luminescence in small animals and rocks, and changes in the colour of liquid mixtures. These and other examples presented in the thesis demonstrate the need for permeability in classification. Finally, the sixth chapter, The science of motion, concludes the second part of the research with a traditional study of mechanics, analysing mostly unpublished notes on pendulum motion, the fall of heavy objects, and projectile motion. This series of observations reflects the continuity between Galileo’s experimental work and that of the Academy. Overall, the manuscript documents related to these three fields highlight a continuity of experimental activity in Florence across decades, transcending the traditional temporal boundaries associated with the Cimento. In summary, through both quantitative and qualitative analyses of archival sources, this research reveals the significance of the Cimento’s contributions in different fields, which were relevant but often underestimated by both contemporaries of the Academy and later historians. Finally, the proposed classification system for the Cimento’s experiments lays the groundwork for comparative studies with the Royal Society of London and the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris. Future research supported by databases documenting experiments conducted in England and France during the same period, along with their categorization, may provide new insights into the collaborations, parallels, and differences among the three major Early Modern academies.

La tesi di Dottorato dal titolo Observing, testing, and (re)measuring: the Accademia del Cimento’s experimental activity (1657-1667) indaga la cospicua attività sperimentale dell’Accademia del Cimento, attiva a Firenze tra il 1657 e il 1667 sotto il patrocinio di Leopoldo de’ Medici. Solo una percentuale dell’oltre migliaio di esperimenti condotti al Cimento venne inserita nei Saggi di Naturali Esperienze (1667), l’unica opera ufficiale dell’Accademia. Per ricostruire l’agenda sperimentale in maniera esaustiva, questo studio prende quindi in esame i ‘diari’ manoscritti delle sessioni accademiche, conservati nel Fondo Galileiano della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Questi, insieme a miscellanee sperimentali e lettere tra accademici, corrispondenti esterni, e membri della famiglia de’ Medici, permettono di approfondire nel dettaglio l’ampio spettro di osservazioni realizzate nelle stanze di Palazzo Pitti a Firenze, dove gli studiosi erano soliti riunirsi. Consultando una parte dei diari, all’epoca inediti e ad oggi ancora non pubblicati, lo storico Edward Knowles Middleton scrisse, nel 1971, il primo magistrale lavoro sull’attività del Cimento, intitolato The Experimenters, con l’obiettivo di ripristinarne l’importanza nel panorama scientifico della seconda metà del XVII secolo, non solo in Italia ma anche a livello europeo. Questo lavoro di tesi si pone come obiettivo principale l’ampliamento del resoconto di Middleton, includendo un numero maggiore di fonti, in modo da mostrare l’importanza intrinseca del lavoro sperimentale del Cimento, che non fu secondario rispetto alle teorie filosofiche o periferico alla narrativa storica dell’Accademia. La prima parte della tesi comprende un’analisi quantitativa degli esperimenti collezionati nei diari delle sedute accademiche. La lettura e trascrizione delle fonti primarie hanno portato alla creazione di un database Excel contenente informazioni relative a oltre mille esperimenti condotti a Firenze dal 1657 al 1667. Questo database, di cui è fornita una panoramica nel primo capitolo, Observation-experimentation processes, rappresenta l'aspetto più originale della ricerca, offrendo una nuova risorsa per lo studio delle pratiche dell'Accademia. Il secondo capitolo, Ordering the study of nature, spiega la scelta di proporre una classificazione degli esperimenti. Questo tentativo tassonomico, una volta integrato nel database, fornisce una visione statistica su interessi chiave e aree di ricerca al Cimento. Fattori che spaziano dal panorama educativo ai cataloghi di libri, dall'organizzazione degli esperimenti nei registri privati alla loro presentazione nei testi pubblici, associati alle loro complessità, giustificano la proposta.