Acceleration and Fall of the Bodies in Oresme. On the Inapplicability of the Theorem of the Mean Speed (Part I)
Abstract
This paper deals with the free fall of bodies in Oresme’s dynamic and his mean speed theorem, that was not applied till Domingo de Soto. lt intends to explain why Oresme did not perform this application to free fall without recurring to “external” reasons such as the epistemology secundum imaginationem. On the contrary, it maintains that there are physico-mathematical reasons –internal reasons– which turn incompatible the dynamical and the kinematical notion of acceleration. On one hand, the Oresmian explanation of velocitatio in fine through the impetus theory does not seem to provide uniform acceleration, which is necessary to the theorem. On the other hand, uniform acceleration did not fulfil the essential condition of continuity. To sum up: the mean speed theorem would not have been applied even though it would not have been demonstrated secundum imaginationem. Finally, on the base of this interpretation it is proposed a hypothesis on the possible foundations of the application in Domingo de Soto. [The second part is in the following volume, vol. 14, 1993]Downloads
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