E Geometrization of Motion: Galileo's Triangle of Speed and Its Various Transformations

Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447
www.brill.nl/esm
e Geometrization of Motion: Galileos Triangle of

Speed and its Various Transformations
Carla Rita Palmerino
Radboud University Nijmegen*
Abstract
is article analyzes Galileos mathematization of motion, focusing in particular on his
use of geometrical diagrams. It argues that Galileo regarded his diagrams of acceleration
not just as a complement to his mathematical demonstrations, but as a powerful heuristic tool. Galileo probably abandoned the wrong assumption of the proportionality
between the degree of velocity and the space traversed in accelerated motion when he
realized that it was impossible, on the basis of that hypothesis, to build a diagram of
the law of fall. e article also shows how Galileos discussion of the paradoxes of
innity in the First Day of the Two New Sciences is meant to provide a visual solution
to problems linked to the theory of acceleration presented in Day ree of the work.
Finally, it explores the reasons why Cavalieri and Gassendi, although endorsing Galileos law of free fall, replaced Galileos diagrams of acceleration with alternative ones.
Keywords
diagrams, science motion, free fall, indivisibles, innite, Galileo, Cavalieri, Gassendi,
Oresme
1. Introduction
Due to their schematic character, diagrams often cannot be understood
independently of the text that they are meant to illustrate, while being
* Radboud University Nijmegen, Faculty of Philosophy, Center for the History of
Philosophy and Science, P.O. Box 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, e Netherlands
(cpalmerino@phil.ru.nl).
I wish to thank Jochen Bttner, Sachiko Kusukawa, Sophie Roux and Edith Sylla for
their useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and Matthias Schemmel for
putting an unpublished article of his at my disposal.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010
DOI : 10.1163/157338210X516279
C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447
411
at the same time essential for the latters comprehension. This might
explain why, in spite of their meager aesthetic appeal, diagrams have
for a long time been more respected than other scientific illustrations.
Contrary to emblematic, symbolic or allegorical figures, which were
usually dismissed as decorative, diagrams were regarded as integral
elements of a scientific text and were hence reproduced in modern
editions and in the secondary literature. Terms such as eccentric,
epicycle, mean speed theorem or law of refraction cannot fail to
evoke, in the historian of science, precise mental images due to the
acquaintance with the respective diagrams.
It is however only in recent years that scholars have begun studying
scientific images, and hence also diagrams, in their own right. In an
important article published in 1985, Samuel Edgerton invited historians of science to treat illustrations not as afterimages of verbal ideas,
but as a unique form of pictorial language with its own grammar and
syntax.1 Edgertons appeal did not go unheard.2 Over the last 25 years
scholars have devoted increasing attention to scientific illustrations,
which they have studied in relation to their underlying pictorial techniques, their typology, their relation to the text and their explanatory
function.3 In the case of historical diagrams, scholars have, for example,
1)
Samuel Y. Edgerton, e Renaissance Development of Scientic Illustrations, in

Science and the Arts in the Renaissance, ed. John William Shirley and F. David Hoeniger
(Washington, D.C., 1985), 168-197, here at 168.
2)
Edgerton was, however, not the rst one to study scientic illustrations. Among
the pioneering studies on the subject one should mention John E. Murdoch, Album
of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York, 1984).
3)
It is impossible in the space of a footnote to do justice to the immense bibliography
about the subject. I shall therefore limit myself to mentioning some selected studies:
Michael Lynch & Steve Woolgar (eds.), Representation in Scientic Practice (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); David R. Topper, Natural Science and Visual Art: Reections
on the Interface, in Beyond History of Science: Essays in Honor of Robert E. Schoeld,
ed. Elizabeth Garber (Bethlehem, 1990), 296-310; Brian J. Ford, Images of Science:
A History of Scientic Illustration (London, 1992); omas Da Costa Kaufmann, e
Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance (Princeton,
1993); Renato G. Mazzolini (ed.), Non-Verbal Communication in Science Prior to 1900
(Florence, 1993); Brian S. Baigrie (ed.), Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (Toronto, 1996); Pamela O. Long,
Objects of Art/Objects of Nature: Visual Representation and the Investigation of
Nature, in Merchants & Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe,
412
analyzed the different ways in which they could complement, summarize or substitute for the texts that they accompanied; they have
drawn a distinction between synoptic, memorative, and functional
roles; and they have tried to determine whether the mode of representation of the mathematical sciences could be clearly distinguished from
the mode of representation of the descriptive sciences.4
In his article, however, Edgerton formulated a controversial thesis
concerning the influence of Renaissance art on science. In his view, not
ed. Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen (New York, 2002), 63-82; Wolfgang Lefvre,
Jrgen Renn and Urs Schoepin (eds.), e Power of Images in Early Modern Science
(Basel, 2003); Sachiko Kusukawa & Ian Maclean (eds.), Transmitting Knowledge. Words,
Images, and Instruments in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 2006).
4)
An attempt to classify diagrams according to their function and their relation to
the text has been made by Andreas Gormans, Imaginationen des Unsichtbaren. Zur
Gattungstheorie des wissenschaftlichen Diagramms, in ErkenntnisErndungKonstruktion. Studien zur Bildgeschichte von Naturwissenschaften und Technik vom 16. bis
zum 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Hollnder (Berlin 2000), 51-71; the question of how
the iconography of descriptive sciences diers from the iconography of mathematical
sciences has been addressed, among others, by Martin Kemp, Temples of the Body
and Temples of the Cosmos: Vision and Visualization in the Vesalian and Copernican Revolutions, in Baigrie (ed.), Picturing Knowledge, 40-85; Sachiko Kusukawa,
Illustrating Nature, in Books and the Sciences in History, ed. Marina Fransca-Spada
and Nick Jardine (Cambridge, 2000), 90-113; Sven Dupr, Visualization in Renaissance Optics: e Function of Geometrical Diagrams and Pictures in the Transmission
of Practical Knowledge, in Kusukawa and Maclean (eds.), Transmitting Knowledge,
11-39. Among the many studies concerning the use of diagrams in the mathematical sciences, I want to mention here John J. Roche, e Semantics of Graphs in
Mathematical Natural Philosophy, in Mazzolini (ed.), Non-Verbal Communication,
197-233; Reviel Netz, e Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in
Cognitive History (Cambridge, 1999); omas L. Hankins, Blood, Dirt, and Nomograms: A Particular History of Graphs, Isis, 90 (1999), 50-80; idem, A Large and
Graceful Sinuosity: John Herschels Graphical Method, Isis 97 (2006), 606-633;
Wolfgang Lefvre, e Limits of Pictures: Cognitive Function of Images in Practical Mechanics1400 to 1600, in Lefvre, Renn and Schoepin (eds.), e Power of
Images, 69-88; Judith V. Field, Renaissance Mathematics: Diagrams for Geometry,
Astronomy and Music, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 29 (2004), 259-277; Michael
Mahoney, Drawing Mechanics, in Picturing Machines 1400-1700, ed. Wolfgang
Lefvre (Cambridge, 2004), 281-306; Christoph Lthy and Alexis Smets, Words,
Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scientic Imagery in Evidence and
Interpretation in Studies on Early Science and Medicine, ed. William R. Newman &
Edith Dudley Sylla (Leiden, 2009), 398-439.
413
only did the Renaissance scientific picture give precise information

about the physical world () without need of explanatory texts and
without the need for the viewer to refer to the actual objects depicted,
but new pictorial techniques such as linear perspective and chiaroscuro
actually boosted the scientific revolution by making it possible to invent
practical workable machines.5
Edgertons thesis was strongly criticized by Michael Mahoney, who
observed, first of all, that however ingenious and intricate, the devices
drawn in the Renaissance were not intrinsically different from ancient
and medieval prototypes.6 Secondly, Renaissance drawings could neither
display the workings of a machine, nor distinguish between the feasible
and the fantastical. Thirdly, the science of mechanics underwent a
radical transformation in the seventeenth-century as it came to treat
the machine as an abstract, general system of quantitative parameters
linked by mathematic relations (). The defining terms of the systems
lay in conceptual realms ever farther removed from the physical space
the artists had become so adept at depicting. Those terms could not be
drawn; at best, they could be diagramed.7 Mahoney showed how the
evolution of the science of mechanics could be reconstructed by following the changing nature of the diagrams. He began his analysis with
Galileo, who gradually came to produce diagrams of motion representing a mathematical space wholly divorced from the physical space in
which the motion itself is taking place; then examined the graphs by
Huygens, which represent the traces of a mathematical argument taking place in another conceptual realm altogether, and Newton, which
form intricate patterns of lines analyzable only by a body of sophisticated, at times even counterintuitive concepts. He then proceeded to
Varignon, who recast Newtons mechanics in the language of Leibnizs
calculus; and ended with Euler, in whose view a diagram, however
good, formed a curtain hiding the essence of mechanics.8
The very conceptual development that forms the subject of Mahoneys
article has been explained by Michel Blay in terms of a shift from
5)
Edgerton, e Renaissance Development, 169.

Michael Mahoney, Diagrams and Dynamics: Mathematical Perspectives on Edgertons esis, in J.W. Shirley and F.D. Hoeniger (eds.), Science and the Arts, 198-220.
7)
Ibid., 200.
8)
Ibid., 203-217.
6)
414
geometrization to mathematization. Galileos project of geometrization of motion, which was founded on the belief that Euclidean
geometry could reveal the real essence of things, was abandoned once
it became clear that it was impossible for the human mind to understand infinity in nature. At this point, geometrization gave the way
to mathematization. The new procedures of the infinitesimal and
differential calculus, which were successfully applied to the study of
accelerated motion, were regarded as mere auxiliaries of calculation
and investigation, which no longer directly mirrored the ontological
structure of reality.9 Although Blay does not explicitly dwell on this
point, it is clear that diagrams played a crucial role in the geometrization project. For those who, like Galileo, regarded mathematics as the
language in which the book of nature was originally written, diagrams
were not just a conventional representation of the laws of motion, but
could in fact assist in the discovery of these laws.
While Mahoney and Blay were especially interested in showing how
the difficulties encountered by Galileo in his attempt to geometrize
motion were superseded by the invention of new mathematical techniques, the intention of this article is to analyze how Galileo himself
tried to come to terms with these difficulties. To this end, I shall analyze
the evolution of his diagrams of acceleration, whichI shall arguehe
conceived not just as a visual complement to his demonstrations, but
also as a heuristic as well as persuasive tool. Moreover, I shall try to
understand the reason why Cavalieri and Gassendi, although endorsing
Galileos law of free fall, replaced Galileos diagrams of acceleration with
alternative ones.
2. Galileos Triangle of Speed and Oresmes Conguration of
Qualities
Galileos law of free fall, which school books anachronistically reproduce
in the formula
Michel Blay, Reasoning with the Innite. From the Closed World to the Mathematical
Universe, English translation by M. B. DeBevoise of Les raisons de linni: Du monde
clos lunivers mathmatique, Paris, 1993 (Chicago, 1998), 1-12.
9)
415
s = gt,
stated, in its original formulation, that the spaces traversed by a falling
bodies are to each other as the squares of the times elapsed (s1: s2 =
t1: t2).
The fact that Galileo relied on the Eudoxian theory of proportions,
which only permits the expression of ratios between homogeneous magnitudes, explains why his diagrams of motion display a greater resemblance to the configurations used by fourteenth-century Calculatores,
and in particular by Oresme, than to Newtons diagrams.
Figure 1: Oresmes representation of the Mean Speed eorem (Clagett, Nicole

Oresme , 99).
Oresmes diagram (figure 1) is meant to compare a motion of uniformly changing speed (CAB) with a uniform motion (FGBA). The
horizontal line AB stands for the duration of the two motions, whereas
the vertical lines (perpendicular to AB) represent the intensity of the
velocity at the various instants of time. Oresme observes that
if in all the instants of time EG, the velocity is equally intense, then on every point
of line AB there will be an altitude everywhere equal, and the gure will be uniformly high, i.e. a rectangle designating this velocity that is simply uniform. But
if in the rst instant of the time there is a velocity of a certain amount and in the
middle instant of the whole time there is a velocity half [of that of the rst instant]
and in the middle instant of the last half [of the time] there is a velocity one quarter and so on proportionally for all other instants (and consequently there will be
zero velocity in the last instant), then () there will be the gure of a right triangle designating the velocity; this velocity was in fact one uniformly diorm terminated at no-degree in its last instant.10
Marshall Clagett (ed. and transl.), Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of
Qualities and Motions: A Treatise of the Uniformity and Diormity of Intensities Known
as Tractatus de congurationibus qualitatum et motuum (Madison, 1968), 291.
10)
416
Later on in his text Oresme observes that the two small triangles EFC
and EGB being equal, the qualities imaginable by a triangle and a
rectangle of this kind are equal.11 Given that in the case under scrutiny
the quality is represented by the total velocity, which is to say the
punctual velocity enduring in time,12 and given that in rectilinear
motion, as in motion of descent, the velocity of motion is attended
with [i.e. is measured by] the space,13 it is clear that the two motions
under comparison will traverse equal spaces in equal times.
Figure 2, which is taken from Galileos Discorsi and will be discussed
in detail below, also compares a uniform motion and a uniformly accelerated motion taking place in equal times. Here the vertical line AB
represents the time of fall, the horizontal lines EB and FB the final
Figure 2: Galileos Representation the Mean Speed eorem (Galilei, Opere, 8: 208).
speeds of the accelerated and uniform motion respectively, and the lines
parallel to it the instantaneous speeds. The areas of the triangle and of
the rectangle are identified by Galileo with the total speed, which he
11)
12)
13)
Ibid., 411.
Ibid., 293.
Ibid., 279.
417
asserts to be proportional to the space traversed, represented by the

separate line CD.
In her contribution to this fascicle, Edith Sylla draws attention to
the fact that in his De configurationibus, Oresme explicitly asserts that
if a uniformly difform quality is divided in equal parts, then the ratio
of the partial qualities, i.e., their mutual relationship, is as the series of
odd numbers.14 It is not my intention here to discuss whether Oresmes
law of a uniformly difform quality can really be labeled law of free fall
or to investigate if and how the Oresmian diagrams exerted an influence
on Galileo.15 Rather, I want to use the comparison between the two
diagrams to show that, in his attempt to geometrize motion, Galileo
hit upon two difficulties that Oresme had not encountered.
The first one concerns the interpretation of the line AB. As John
Roche has noticed, Oresmes diagram may be considered the first
totally conventional graphical representation of a law in physics, as
neither the vertical nor the horizontal lines represent a spatial extension.16 The reason for this has certainly to be sought in the fact that the
doctrine of the configuration was not exclusively applied to the
description of motion, but was rather meant to describe and represent
the alteration over time of all intensive qualities, velocity being only
one of them. Figure 1 could, for example, be used to compare a body
at constant temperature with a body cooling down. In this case the
horizontal line AB would still stand for the time elapsed, whereas the
vertical lines perpendicular to it would represent the intensity of the
temperature of the two bodies in successive instants of time.
As Matthias Schemmel has recently observed, in the early modern
period, the diagrams were applied to motion without being embedded
in a general theory of change. There was, therefore, no particular prefIbid., 563.
For a discussion of a possibile inuence of the Oxford Calculatores and/or Oresme
on Galileo, see Anneliese Maier, Die Vorlufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhundert (Rome,
1949); ead., An der Grenze von Scholastik und Naturwissenschaft (Rome, 1952); Edith
Sylla, Galileo and the Oxford Calculatores: Analytical Languages and the Mean-Speed
eorem for Accelerated Motion, in Reinterpreting Galileo, ed. William A. Wallace
(Washington, 1986), 53-108; Antonio Nardi, La quadratura della velocit. Galileo,
Mersenne, la tradizione, Nuncius 3 (1988), 2764.
16)
Roche, e Semantics of Graphics, 207.
14)
15)
418
erence to interpret the line of extension as representing time, and its

interpretation as space traversed () became equally plausible.17 As a
matter of fact, the spatial interpretation initially appeared to Galileo
more plausible than the temporal interpretation. As we shall see below,
in his first diagrams of motion Galileo took the vertical line to represent
the space traversed by the freely falling body and assumed the speed of
fall to grow in proportion to that space. It was only after he realized the
falsity of this assumption that he changed the interpretation of the
vertical line of his triangle of speed. I therefore think that Schemmel is
perfectly right in claiming that Galileo used the temporal interpretation of extension not simply because this was the canonical way to
describe change, but because he had arrived at the insight that the
spatial interpretation contradicted his other findings.18
Another difference between the Oresmian and the Galilean diagram
concerns the interpretation of the surface of the triangle. As we have
just seen, Oresme identified this area with the space traversed, on the
account that space is the measure of total velocity. For Galileo, who
interprets the figure in the light of Cavalieris theory of indivisibles, this
identification is far more problematic; for the addition of an infinite
number of degrees of speed cannot engender space, but only total
speed.19 Moreover, Galileo seems to be aware of the difficulties linked
to the comparison of two infinite sets of indivisibles; that is to say, of
all the degrees of speed contained in the triangle EAB and all the degrees
of speed contained in the rectangle AGFB.20
The main goal of the following pages is to show how the difficulties
encountered in the construction of his diagrams of motion helped
Galileo to detect some important conceptual mistakes and how he tried,
by means of new diagrams, to solve, or sometimes simply to hide, these
mistakes.
Matthias Schemmel, e English Galileo: omas Harriots Work on Motion as an

Example of Precassical Mechanics, 2 vols. (Dordrecht, 2008), 1: 57.
18)
Matthias Schemmel, Medieval Representations of Change and their Early Modern
Application (Berlin, Max Plank Insitute for the History of Science, preprint series,
forthcoming), 24.
19)
Blay and Festa, Mouvement, continu, 96.
20)
Cf. Paolo Galluzzi, Momento. Studi Galileiani (Rome, 1979), 354.
17)
419
3. e Evolution of Galileos Diagrams of Acceleration from the

Letter to Sarpi to the Dialogue
On 16 october 1604, Galileo wrote a letter to Paolo Sarpi in which he
formulated for the first time the law of free fall. As is well known,
however, he derived the law from the false assumption that the speed
of fall grows in proportion to the space traversed (rather than to the
time elapsed):
inking again about the matters of motion, in which, to demonstrate the phenomena observed by me, I lacked a completely indubitable principle to put as an
axiom, I am reduced to a proposition which has much of the natural and the evident: and with this assumed, I then demonstrate the rest; that is, that the spaces
passed by natural motion are in double proportion to the times, and consequently
the spaces passed in equal times are as the odd numbers from one, and other
things. And the principle is this: that the natural movable goes increasing in velocity with that proportion with which it departs from the beginning of its motion;
as, for example, the heavy body falling from the terminus a along the line abcd
(gure 3), I assume that the degree of velocity that it has at c, to the degree it had
at b, is as the distance ca to the distance ba, and thus consequently, at d it has a
degree of velocity greater than at c according as the distance da is greater than ca.21
Figure 3: Diagram accompanying Galileos letter to Sarpi of 16 October 1604 (Galilei,

Opere, 10: 115).
Galileo Galilei, Le Opere (Edizione Nazionale), ed. A. Favaro, 20 vols. (Florence, 1890-1909), 10: 115, translated in Peter Damerow, Gideon Freudenthal, Peter
McLaughlin and Jrgen Renn, Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics ( 2nd ed.,
New York, 2004), 229-230.
21)
420
The question of how Galileo managed to derive a correct law from a

false principle has been widely debated by scholars and I do not want
to dwell upon it here.22 What interests me, rather, is the possible origin
of Galileos mistake. As observed by Galluzzi 30 years ago, Galileo
arrived at his evident proposition by extending to the study of accelerated motion a principle used in his mechanical speculations.23 Galluzzis hypothesis finds confirmation in a manuscript fragment (Ms 72,
fol. 128r), probably redacted shortly after the letter to Sarpi, in which
Galileo writes that his principle corresponds to all the experiences that
we see in the instruments and machines that work by striking, in which
the percussent makes so much the greater effect, the greater the height
from which it falls. 24
A different explanation of Galileos mistake, which is in fact not
incompatible with Galluzzis, has been offered by Michael Mahoney,
according to whom spatial intuition must take some share of the
blame. Galileos first diagrams were still Archimedean in kind, which
means that they depicted the apparatus as a spatial object and located
the operative parameters in its constituent elements. In the case of the
law of fall, the apparatus was clearly an inclined plane on which Galileo
tried to locate the parameters of acceleration.25 Another manuscript
fragment (Ms 72, fol. 163v), which was probably written before the
letter to Sarpi, clearly shows how the inclined plane figured in Galileos
early speculations about motion.26 In this folio Galileo tries, by means
22)
See, e.g., Stillman Drake, Galileos Work on Free Fall in 1604, Physis, 16 (1974),
309-322; Enrico Giusti, Galileo e le leggi del moto, in Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e
dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze, ed. E. Giusti (Turin, 1990),
ix-lx, esp. xxv-xxxvi; Blay and Festa, Mouvement, continu, 65-72 ; Damerow et al.,
Exploring the Limits, 165-179.
23)
Galluzzi, Momento, 272.
24)
Galilei, Opere, 8: 373, translated in Damerow et al., Exploring the Limits, 360-361.
For an analysis of this fragment, see also Stillman Drake, Galileos 1604 Fragment
on Falling Bodies (Galileo Gleanings XVIII), e British Journal for the History of
Science, 4 (1969), 340-358.
25)
Mahoney, Diagrams and Dynamics, 206-207.
26)
In his Ph. D. thesis Jochen Bttner provides convincing evidence of the fact that
folios 163, 164 and 172 of Ms. 72 must have been drafted around the end of 1602,
that is to say shortly after Galileoe letter to Guidobaldo of 29 November 1602 (see
Jochen Bttner, Galileos Challenges: e Origin and Early Conceptual Development of
Figure 4: Ms. 72, fol.

163v: Galileos early
attempt to demonstrate
the double distance rule
(Galilei, Opere, 8: 384).
421
Figure 5: Ms. 72, fol. 163v: An accelerated motion

turns into a uniform motion (Galilei, Opere, 8: 384).
of figures 4 and 5, to offer a demonstration of the so-called Double

Distance Rule, which states that the space traversed in a given time by
a body in uniform rectilinear motion is twice the space traversed, in
the same time, by a body in naturally accelerated motion having a final
speed equal to the constant speed of the uniform motion.
In figure 4 one sees that the area of triangle abc, which represents
all the velocities acquired by a body falling vertically from a to b, is
half the area of the rectangle abcd, which represents all the velocities of
a motion made across the same space ab with a uniform speed bc. Figure 5 is used by Galileo to show that a body first rolling down the
inclined plane ab and then along the horizontal line bc would take the
same time to cover the distances ab and bc (double than ab). As Matthias Schemmel recently observed, although Galileo derived both the
law of fall and the Double Distance Rule from the assumption of a
proportionality between velocity and space, he later recognized that,
taken together, the two theorems contradicted precisely that assumption. In fol. 91v of Ms. 72 Galileo in fact used the Double Distance
Galileos eory of Naturally Accelerated Motion on Inclined Planes (Ph. D. thesis, Berlin,
Humboldt-Universitt, 2009), 401-406, 455.
422
Rule to prove that the speed of fall increases in proportion to the time
elapsed.27 To me it seems plausible to assume that Galileo realized the
shortcomings of his demonstration by reasoning on figure 4, for the
main problem of this diagram is that it offers two mutually contradictory representations of the space traversed by the falling body. The
latter is in fact identified both with the line ab, which is common to
the triangle abc and the rectangle adbc, and with the area abc, which is
instead half the area of adbc.
If we return to the letter to Sarpi, we see that the diagram accompanying it neither depicts a spatial object, nor represents the various
parameters of acceleration. Only one physical magnitude finds a representation i2n the figure, namely the vertical line of fall, which is
arbitrarily divided in three segments that do not need to be equal.
Galileo tells us that the degrees of speed the body has at the points b,
c and d are to each other as the lines ab, ac and ad, but he does not draw
the segments corresponding to the degrees (cf. fig. 3, above). This happens instead in the manuscript note mentioned above (fol. 128 r) where
Galileo starts, as in the letter to Sarpi, by enunciating the principle
according to which
the naturally falling heavy body goes continually increasing its velocity according
as the distance increases from the terminus from which it parted, as, for example,
the heavy body departing from the point a and falling through the line ab. I suppose that the degree of velocity at point d is as much greater than the degree of
velocity at the point c as the distance da is greater than ca () ; and this principle assumed I shall demonstrate the rest.28
The rest is demonstrated by means of figure 6.
27)
Schemmel, Medieval Representations. For an analysis of the demonstration contained in fol. 163 v, see also Winfred L. Wisan, e New Science of Motion: A Study
of Galileos De Motu Locali, Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 13 (1974), 103-306,
204-207; Damerow et al., Exploring the Limits, 176-179.
28)
Galilei, Opere, 8: 373-374, translated in Damerow et al., Exploring the Limits, 360.
423
Figure 6: Ms. 72, fol. 128 r: e increase of speed in accelerated motion (Galilei,
Opere, 8: 373).
After having drawn the line ab, which stands for the distance fallen,
Galileo represents the degrees of speed acquired at the points c, d, e and
f by means of segments proportional to ac, ad, ae and af. The fact that
these segmentswhich he draws perpendicular to abterminate in
the line ak, reveals that the increase of speed is continuous. Given that
what is true for these degrees of speed must be true for all the degrees
of speed acquired in the fall, the overall velocity with which the body
has passed the line ad is to the overall velocity with which it has passed
the line ac as the triangle adh is to the triangle acg. The same thing is
asserted by Galileo in folio 85 v of Ms. 72, where he explicitly states
that the two triangles are constituted by an infinite number of lines.
The conclusion Galileo draws from this is that the velocity along ad
and the velocity along ac are to each other as the squares of the spaces
traversed.
There is one magnitude that is absent from Galileos diagram; namely,
the time of fall. The latter makes its appearance only in the last part of
the demonstration, where we read that
Since velocity to velocity has contrary proportion of that which time has to time
(for it is the same thing to increase the velocity as to decrease the time), therefore
the time of the motion along ad to the time of the motion on ac has half the
proportion that the distance ad has to the distance ac. e distances, then, from
424
the beginning of the motion are as the squares of the times, and, dividing, the
spaces passed in equal times are as the odd numbers from unity.29
As already observed by scholars, this passage contains two mistakes:

first, the inverse proportionality between velocity and time only holds
when the spaces traversed are equal, which is clearly not the case here.
Secondly, from this inverse proportionality, Galileo erroneously infers
that times are to each other as the square roots of the spaces.30
But what is relevant from our point of view is the fact that none of
the diagrams drawn by Galileo in the manuscript notes redacted around
1604 provide a representation of the law of fall. Galileo enunciates and
represents the double distance rule and the length-time proportionality, but does not manage to produce a diagram showing the growth
of spaces in successive intervals of time.31
I am inclined to believe that it was precisely this factthat the principle of the space/speed proportionality did not yield a diagrammatic
representation of the odd number lawthat helped Galileo to realize
the falsity of this principle. The manuscript notes clearly reveal that
Galileo did struggle to produce a diagram into which the three parameters of acceleration, speed, time and space, could be made to fit. As I
mentioned above, in folio 91v Galileo makes use of the Double Distance Rule to demonstrate that the speed of fall must increase in proportion to the time elapsed, but produces a hybrid diagram (figure 7)
which conflates the representation of speed with that of space. While
stating that the moments of speed cd and be are in the same proportion
as the intervals of time ac and cb, Galileo takes the segments ac and
Galilei, Opere, 8: 374, transl. in Damerow et al., Exploring the Limits, 360.
Giusti, Galileo e le leggi del moto, xxxv; Blay and Festa, Mouvement, continu,
69, Damerow et al., Exploring the Limits, 173.
31)
e Double Distance Rule is demonstrated in fol. 163v discussed above, whereas
the principle of the lenth-time-speed proportionality, according to which the times
of descent of a body along inclined planes of dierent length but equal elevation are
proportional to the length of those planes, is demonstrated in fol. 179r. e diagram
accompanying this demonstration is also interesting, as it merges the representation
of the principle of speed/space proportionality with the representation of the inclined
plane.
29)
30)
425
cb to represent at the same time the spaces traversed and the times
elapsed.32
Figure 7: Ms. 72 91v.
As is well known, the first published formulation of Galileos law of free

fall is to be found in the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. After having stated, in the First Day, that a falling body starting
from rest passes through an infinite number of degrees of speed, Salviati states, in the Second Day, that the fact that free fall is continually
accelerated
is of no value unless one knows the ratio according to which the increase in speed
takes place, something which () was rst discovered by our friend the Academician, who in some of his yet unpublished writings () proves the following.
e acceleration of straight motion in heavy bodies proceeds according from the
odd numbers beginning from one (). is is the same as to say that the spaces
passed over by a body starting from rest have to each other the ratios of the squares
of the times in which such spaces were traversed. Or we may say that the spaces
passed over are to each other as the squares of the times.33
Although Salviati assures his friend that there is a most purely mathematical proof of this statement, he does not produce it and neither
does he draw a diagram representing the law. A few pages later, however,
he provides a mathematical demonstration of another proposition;
namely, the Double Distance Rule, this time using a diagram (figure
32)
A careful analysis of fol. 91 v and fol. 152 r has enabled scholars to reconstruct
how Galileo discovered the incompatibility of the proportionality between increase
of velocity and growth of space with the law of fall. See Damerow et al., Exploring
the Limits, 180-188.
33)
Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, tr. S. Drake, 2nd
ed. (Berkeley, 1967), 221-222 (= Opere, 7: 248).
426
Figure 8: e demonstration of the Double Distance Rule in the Dialogue (Galilei,

Opere, 7: 255).
8). Salviati considers the triangle ABC, whose side AC is divided in any
number of equal parts AD, DE, EF and FG. He asks us to imagine the
sections marked along side AC to be equal times. Then the parallels
drawn through the points D, E, F and G are to represent the degrees
of speed, accelerated and increasing equally in equal times.
But since the acceleration is made continuously from moment to moment, and
not discretely from one time to another, and the point A is assumed as the instant
of minimum speed (that is, the state of rest and the rst instant of the subsequent
time AD), it is obvious that before the degree of speed DH was acquired in the
time AD, innite others of lesser and lesser degree have been passed through. ese
were achieved during the innite instants that there are in the time DA corresponding to the innite points on the line DA.34
While in folio 128 r, discussed above, Galileo inferred the continuity

of acceleration from the diagram (that is to say from the fact that the
segments representing the moments of speed all terminated on the same
line), here he constructs the diagram on the assumption that acceleration is continuous. He assumes, in other words, that if a falling body
starting from rest acquires a degree of speed BC in the time interval
AC, then all the degrees of speed acquired in the time AC must fit in
34)
Ibid., 228-229 (= Opere, 7: 255).
427
the triangle ABC. This assumption rests, in turn, on the hypothesis that
time is composed of an infinite number of instants (just like a geometrical line is composed of an infinite number of points), and that
the total speed of fall is composed of an infinite number of degrees of
speed (just as a triangle is composed of an infinite number of lines).
Although the diagram clearly shows that the lines HD, IE, KF and LG
cut the triangle in areas that grow according to the odd numbers starting from one, Galileo is careful not to identify those areas directly with
the spaces traversed. Rather than referring directly to the previously
enunciated law of fall, he prefers to establish a link between space and
time by means of the total speed. For he states that whatever space is
traversed by the moving body with a motion which begins from rest
and continues uniformly accelerating, it has consumed and made use
of infinite degrees of increasing speed corresponding to the infinite lines
which, starting from point A, are understood as drawn parallel to line
HD and to IE, KF, LG and BC.35
Galileo proceeds in his demonstration by drawing the parallelogram
AMBC, which represents a uniform rectilinear motion made in the
time AC with a speed equal to the final speed BC of the uniformly
accelerated motion. He notices that the aggregate of degrees of speed
represented by the parallelogram
is double that of the total of the increasing speeds in the triangle, just as the parallelogram is double the triangle. And therefore if the falling body makes use of
the accelerated degrees of speed conforming to the triangle ABC and has passed
over a certain space in a certain time, it is reasonable and probable that by making use of the uniform velocities corresponding to the parallelogram it would pass
with uniform motion during the same time through double the space which it
passed with the accelerated motion.36
A comparison between the diagram of the Dialogue (fig. 8) and that

used in fol. 163v to prove the Double Distance Rule (fig. 4) makes it
clear why one should prefer a temporal interpretation over a spatial
interpretation of the vertical line. While figure 4 contained two mutually inconsistent representations of the space of fall (i.e. the line ab and
35)
36)
Ibid., 229 (= Opere, 7: 255).

Ibid., 229 (= Opere, 7: 256).
428
the surface abc), and no representation of the time elapsed, figure 8

clearly shows that the two motions under comparison take place in the
same time (AC) but cover two distances, one of which is twice as large
as the other (the area of AMBC being double the area of ACB). Another
important difference between the two diagrams lies in the fact that in
figure 8, the triangle ABC is subdivided into areas which visibly grow
according to the series of the odd numbers starting from 1. However,
the fact that Galileo doesnt label his conclusion as certain but as
reasonable and probable is a clear indication that he finds it problematic to infer the relation between spaces traversed from the relation
between total velocities.37 This is why he does not explicitly compare
the spaces traversed by the falling body in the equal and successive times
AD, DE, EF, FG and GC, leaving to the careful reader the task of
intuiting the odd number law in the triangle of speed.
4. Cavalieris Imagined Diagram of Acceleration and its Inuence
on Galileo
In 1632, the year in which the Dialogue came out, Galileos pupil
Bonaventura Cavalieri also published a book, the Specchio ustorio. In
chapter XXXIX, which is devoted to the motion of heavy bodies, Cavalieri reports that after having learned from Galileo that the acceleration
of fall happens according to the odd number ratio, he has tried to arrive
at the same conclusion through a different root. His idea was to compare all the degrees of speed traversed in an accelerated motion to all
the concentric circumferences that can be found in a circle, with the
center representing the state of rest. Cavalieri however does not draw a
diagram, but only imagines replacing Galileos triangle of speed with a
circle of speed.
Given that it is impossible to sum up an innite number of circumferences, I use
the area of the circle, and from that I deduce the proportions of the aggregated
speeds, starting from the centre, which is rest, and proceeding to the outmost circumference, that is to say to the maximum; for I have demonstrated in my Geometry that the ratio which is found between two circles is the same as the ratio which
37)
Blay and Festa, Mouvement, continu, 76; Giusti, Galileo e le leggi del moto, liv.
429
is found between all the circumferences described around the centre of the one
and those described around the centre of the other (). And given that the areas
of dierent circles are to each other as the squares of their respective semi-diameters, and that the ratio with which the speed of a body grows is the same as the
ratio with which the spaces traversed grow (), the spaces traversed by the body
() are to each other as the squares of the radii of the circles representing those
velocities, and hence as the squares of the times, which we identify with the radii
(). Hence the spaces traversed by a falling body in equal and successive intervals of time grow according to the odd numbers starting form one (). I have
said all this in passing, which is why I have not explained myself with a gure, nor
with the clarity that would be necessary, and I refer the reader to what Galileos
subtlety will explain in the work on motion that he announces in his Dialogues.38
The fact that Cavalieri refers the reader to Galileos forthcoming work
on motion, means that he does not consider the Dialogue to contain a
clear proof of the law of fall. Moreover, he seems to indicate that in
order to be sufficiently clear such a proof should be accompanied by a
diagram, which, as we have seen, was not the case in the Dialogue. As
has already been observed, Cavalieris proof does not solve any of the
problems implicit in Galileos demonstration. On the contrary, the fact
that Cavalieri compares motions taking place in different times renders
the equation of total speed and space traversed even more problematic
than it was the case in the Dialogue.39
But what about the diagram which Cavalieri imagines to substitute
for the triangle of speed? According to Festa and Blay the detour through
the geometry of the circle can only find its reason in the need to use a
diagram differing from Galileos: En fait, cela naura rien apport, car
ltude du cercle au moyen des indivisibles passe par une transformation
cercle-triangle.40 Blay and Festa think here of a theorem of the Geometria indivisibilibus, in which Cavalieri transforms the circles into triangles in order to prove that their areas are to each other as all their
circumferences. I think that Cavalieris choice instead finds its reason
in the need to eliminate from the diagram a vertical line which could
be mistaken for the space of fall. As the manuscript notes analyzed above
Bonaventura Cavalieri, Lo specchio ustorio, overo, Trattato delle settioni coniche (Bologna, 1632), 159-162, translation mine.
39)
Giusti, A Master and His Pupils, 128.
40)
38)
430
clearly show, the fact that Galileo used a right triangle to represent both
the acceleration of fall and the motion along an inclined plane, made
it appear natural to interpret the vertical lines of both diagrams as the
distance traversed by a falling body. Cavalieri might also have thought
that the image of a circle expanding progressively from its center to the
periphery was more suited to describe the passage of a body through
infinite degrees of speed than that of a triangle which is first drawn and
than divided, in thought, into an infinite number of parallel lines.
I am convinced that Cavalieris alternative representation of motion
left a trace in Galileos work, notably in the First Day of the Two New
Sciences. In the context of a discussion about the strength of materials,
Galileo introduces a digression about the paradoxes of infinity. One of
them is the famous problem of the Rota Aristotelis (discussed in Philippe
Bouliers contribution to this fascicle), which Galileo uses to provide
an indirect confirmation of the hypothesis that material bodies are
composed of an infinite number of non-extended atoms, among which
infinite non-extended voids are interspersed. As I have argued elsewhere, the only way to understand the paradoxical atomism proposed
by Galileo in the First Day of Two New Sciences is to link it to the
theory of acceleration proposed in Day Three.41 The analysis of
the paradox enables Galileo to show, first of all, that space, time and
motion are all composed of unextended indivisibles; for given that a
circumference touches a plane in one point, during a complete rotation
its infinite points will successively touch the plane without resting on
it for more than one instant. The main challenge posed by the paradox
was however to explain what happens to the internal circumference
when the external one accomplishes a revolution on its tangent.
Galileos answer consists in claiming that while each of the points of
line BF is touched by a point of the external circumference, only half
of the points of line CE are touched by the internal circumference, the
Carla Rita Palmerino, Una nuova scienza della materia per la scienza nova del moto.
La discussione dei paradossi dellinnito nella prima giornata dei Discorsi galileiani,
in Atti del Convegno su Atomisme et continuum au XVIIe sicle, ed. Egidio Festa and
Romano Gatto (Naples, 2000), 275-319; ead., Galileos and Gassendis Solutions
to the Rota Aristotelis Paradox. A Bridge between Matter and Motion eories, in
Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter eories, ed. Christoph Lthy, John
E. Murdoch, and William Newman (Leiden, 2001), 381-422.
41)
431
other half being left empty (cf. figure 9). Transferring his conclusion
from geometry to physics, Galileo observes that a rarefied body, just
like the line traced out by the smaller circle, has to be considered as
being composed of an infinite number of non-extended points, part of
which are filled with matter and part of which are void.42
Figure 9: e Paradox of the Wheel in the Two New Sciences (Galilei, 7: 68).
Although the official goal of Galileos analysis of the paradox was to

explain the difficult problem of the rarefaction and condensation of
matter, I believe that it was also meant to solve some difficulties linked
to the theory of acceleration. Take, for example, the case of a body that
is carried from rest on an inclined plane, and also along a vertical of
the same height. Galileo tells us that the degrees of speed acquired in
the two descents are the same, but that the times of the movements
will be to one another as the lengths of the plane and of the vertical.43
How can these claims be reconciled with the contention that a falling
body acquires a new degree of speed in each instant of time? Galileo
must have raised this problem in a letter to Bonaventura Cavalieri,
which is unfortunately lost to us. In his reply Cavalieri wrote:
I will not deny that parallels intercept the same quantity of points on the perpendicular and on the oblique line, just as it happens with the concentric circumferences, but this does not mean that the two lines are equally long. For if we want
to compose the lines out of points, I believe that the dierence between the two
Galileo Galilei, Two New Sciences, transl. and ed. Stillman Drake, 2nd ed. (Toronto,
1989), 33 (= Opere, 8: 71).
43)
Ibid., 175 (= Opere, 8: 215)
42)
432
transits can be explained with the fact that the points are more rare in the oblique
than in the perpendicular line.44
Cavalieris words may have been a source of inspiration for Galileo,

who, in his analysis of the paradox of the wheel, shows precisely how
the inner circumference can rarefy in order to cover a longer line.
Moreover, the fact that in his Specchio ustorio Cavalieri used concentric
circumferences to represent the growth of degrees of speed in accelerated
motion substantiates the hypothesis that Galileo used the Rota Aristotelis paradox not only to illustrate his theory of matter, but also to
suggest a visual solution for problems connected to his theory of
motion.
5. Galileos Geometrical Proof of the Passage of the Body through
Innite Degrees of Speed
As we have seen, in his Dialogue Galileo derived the odd number law
from two assumptions; namely that, 1) a freely falling body passes
through an infinite number of degrees of speed, and, 2) that the speed
of fall grows with the time elapsed.
The first hypothesis raised considerable perplexity, especially in
French circles, as is testified by the polemical reactions of Descartes,
Mersenne, Roberval and Fermat.45 The last formulated his doubts in
an essay, which Carcavy forwarded to Galileo in March 1637.46
In a letter to Carcavy of 5 June 1637, Galileo tried to rebut to Fermats argument by insisting on the fact that space, time and motion
were isomorphic magnitudes. Starting from the consideration that to
44)
() che poi tanti punti si causino da tutte le parallele cos nella perpendicolare
come nellobliqua, questo non lo negar, come anco nelle circonferenze concentriche;
ma che perci doverse dirsi tanto longa luna come laltra, mentre volessimo compor le
linee di punti, dico che la dierenza di questi transiti pu cagionare questo, potendosi
credere che detti punti siano forsi pi diradati nellobliqua che nella perpendicolare,
Opere, 16: 138, translation mine.
45)
See Carla Rita Palmerino, Innite Degrees of Speed. Marin Mersenne and the
Debate over Galileos Law of Free Fall, Early Science and Medicine, 4 (1999), 269-328.
46)
crit anonyme indit sur la chute des graves, in Oeuvres de Fermat, Supplement aux
tomes I-IV, documents indits, ed. Cornelis de Waard (Paris, 1922), 36-37.
433
claim that there is no motion without speed would be the same as to

claim that there is no line without length, he came to the conclusion
that
Just as it is impossible, starting from a point without length to draw a line without passing through innite shorter and shorter lines, which are comprised
between the line and the point, so a mobile starting from rest before acquiring
any degree of speed must pass through the innite degrees of speed occurring
between any degree of speed and innite slowness.47
Galileo illustrated his conclusion by means of figure 10, which shows

how the intersections between the angle bc and the line de grow as de
descends towards fg.
Figure 10: Galileos letter to Carcavy, 5 June 1637: e passage of the body through
innite degrees of speed (Galilei, Opere, 17: 92).
What is true for lines is also true for time and motion. Just as it is
impossible to draw a line, however short, without an infinite number
of shorter and shorter lines occurring between it and point a; so too is
it impossible, in the free fall of a body, to assign an interval of time,
however small, without an infinite number of smaller times being comprised between it and the first interval, or to assign a degree of speed
47)
E s come partirsi dal punto, che manca di lunghezza, non si pu entrare nella
linea senza passare per tutte le innite linee, minori e minori, che si comprendono tra
qualsivoglia linea segnata e `l punto, cos il mobile che si parte dalla quiete, che non
ha velocit alcuna, per conseguire qualsivoglia grado di velocit deve passare per glinniti gradi di tardit compresi tra qual si sia velocit e laltissima et innita tardit,
Opere, 17: 92, translation mine.
434
such that the falling body has not passed through an infinite number
of smaller ones.48
The letter to Carcavy is particularly important for us because it sheds
light on Galileos view about the meaning and function of diagrams.
The choice of using geometrical lines to represent time and velocity is
not arbitrary, but is rooted in the idea that there is an isomorphism
between the magnitudes being represented and the elements representing them: time, speed and lines are all actually composed of an infinite
number of indivisibles.
In the Two New Sciences, Galileo was to use not a geometrical, but a
physical argument, based on the phenomenon of percussion, to demonstrate that falling bodies pass through an infinite number of degrees
of speed. However, the answer to Fermat is implicitly alluded to or,
better said, graphically reproduced, in the First Day by means of another
geometrical paradox: the so-called paradox of the bowl.
With the help of figure 11, Galileo demonstrates that a plane moving
from DE up to AB intersects equal areas on the cone CDE and on the
bowl ADFEB. But this equality seems to disappear when the plane
reaches AB, for here the two always-equal solids, as well as their always
equal bases, finally vanishthe one pair in the circumference of a
Figure 11: e paradox of the bowl in the Two New Sciences (Galilei, Opere, 8: 74).
circle, and the other pair in a single point.49 The details of Galileos
reasoning (which Philippe Boulier reconstructs in his contribution to
this fascicle) need not concern us here. What I want to stress is that
Galileo seems to use the diagram to show that the passage from rest
48)
49)
Ibid., 92-93.
Galilei, Two New Sciences, 36 (= Opere, 8: 75).
435
to motion is a jump from the one to the infinity. For however close
the plane may come to the line AB, and hence however small the line
CF may be, there will always be an infinite number of shorter lines.
Moreover, figure 11 can also be seen as a representation of the Double
Distance Rule, as Galileo reminds us that the aggregate of lines contained in the parallelogram ABED (which can be taken to represent
a uniform motion) is twice the aggregate of lines contained in the
triangle DCE (representing a uniformly accelerated motion). Finally,
Galileos analysis of the paradox also provides an explanation of the
puzzling fact that in the accelerated motion the first instant is represented by a point, whereas in the uniform motion it is represented by
a line (cf. fig. 8).
As a final comment on the paradox, Salviati observes that the infinite
is inherently incomprehensible to us, as indivisibles are likewise; so just
think what they will be when taken together! If we want to compose a
line of indivisible points, we shall have to make these infinitely many,
and so it is necessary to understand simultaneously the infinite and the
indivisible.50 To understand simultaneously the infinite and the indivisible is precisely what Galileo tries to do in the Third Day of the Discorsi,
where he introduces a number of new diagrams of acceleration.
6. e Triangles of Speeds in the ird Day of the Discorsi
In Day three of the Two New Sciences Salviati reads aloud a Latin treatise On Local Motion written by his friend Academician. The section
On Naturally Accelerated Motion opens with a definitionwhich states
that a uniformly accelerated motion is that which, abandoning rest,
adds on to itself equal momenta of swiftness in equal timesfollowed
by a postulatewhich states that the degrees of speed acquired by the
same moveable over different inclinations of planes are equal whenever
the heights of those planes are equaland by a number propositions
that are proven demonstratively.51
In Proposition I, Theorem I, Galileo demonstrates the so-called
mean speed theorem according to which the time in which a certain
50)
51)
Ibid., 38 (=Opere, 8: 76-77).

Ibid., 162 (= Galilei, Opere, 8: 205).
436
space is traversed by a body in uniformly accelerated motion from rest

is equal to the time in which the same space would be traversed by the
same body with a uniform motion whose degree of speed is one-half
the final degree of speed of the previous motion. As in the Dialogue,
Galileo makes use of a diagram comparing the uniform motion with
the uniformly accelerated one.
Figure 12: Galileos Representation the Mean Speed eorem (Galilei, Opere, 8:
208).
In figure 12, as in figure 8 above, the vertical line represents the time
of fall, whereas the lines parallel to the base of the triangle represent the
degrees of speed acquired by the falling body. One obvious difference
between the two figures is that in figure 12 the parallelogram is not
double, but equal to the triangle. By using a typically Cavalerian
language,52 Galileo observes that
If the parallels in triangle AEB are extended as far as IG, we shall have the aggregate of all parallels contained in the quadrilateral equal to the aggregate of those
included in the triangle AEB, for those in triangle IEF are matched by those contained in triangle GIA, while those which are in the trapezium AIFB are common.
Since each instant and all instants of time AB correspond to each point and all
points of line AB () it appears that there are just as many momenta of speed
consumed in the accelerated motion according to the increasing parallels of tri-
52)
437
angle AEB, as in the equable motion according to the parallels of the parallelogram GB. For the decit of momenta in the rst half of the accelerated motion
(.) is made up by the momenta represented by the parallels of triangle IEF. It is
therefore evident that equal spaces will be run through in the same time by the
two moveables (); which was the proposition intended.53
It is interesting to see that this time Galileo presents his conclusion not
as reasonable and probable, as he had done in the Dialogue, but as
evident. This self-confidence probably stems from the fact that in the
diagram of the Two New Sciences, space is no longer conflated with the
total speed, but finds an independent representation in the line CD.
A fact which has so far been neglected by scholars, but which in my
view is important, is that Galileo begins building his diagram precisely
from line CD. While in the Dialogue and in the Specchio ustorio space
was introduced only at the end of the demonstration, in the Two New
Sciences Galileo takes the line AB to represent the time in which the
space CD is traversed by a moveable in uniformly accelerated movement
from rest A. Put differently: while in the Dialogue Galileo compared
two motions taking place in equal times and then established the relation between the spaces traversed, here he first postulates that a body
in uniformly accelerated motion traverses a given space in a given time,
and then tries to find out which speed a body in uniform motion should
possess in order to traverse the same space in the same time.
The same procedure is used in the demonstration of Proposition II,
Theorem II, in which Galileo proves that if a moveable descends from
rest in uniformly accelerated motion, the spaces run through in any
times whatever are to each other as the duplicate ratio of their times;
that is, are as the squares of those times.54
Also in this case, Galileo first draws the two vertical lines AB and HI
and postulates that HL is the space traversed in time AD (cf. figure 13).
Subsequently he adds to the diagram the oblique line AC and the
horizontal lines OD and PE. By comparing the degrees of speed in D
and E, he manages to prove that in time AE, double of AD, the body
shall traverse space HM, which is four times HL. From this Galileo
53)
54)
Galilei, Two New Sciences, 165-166 (= Galilei, Opere, 8: 208-209).

438
concludes that if there are any number of equal times taken successively
from the first instant or beginning of motion, say AD, DE, EF,
Figure 13: Salviatis representation of the odd-number-law in the Two New Sciences
and FG, in which spaces HL, LM, MN, NI are traversed, then these
spaces will be to one another as are the odd numbers starting from
unity, that is as 1, 3, 5, 7.55
At this point Sagredo asks Salviati to suspend his reading for a bit,
for he wants to explain a fancy that has come to his mind. For his
own as well as for his interlocutors understanding, he draws figure 14,
where AO represents the time of fall, and the parallel lines CB, IF and
OP represent the degrees of speed. By using the mean speed theorem,
Sagredo translates the accelerated motions taking place in the successive
times AC, CI and IO into uniform motions taking place in the same
times, and notices that the spaces traversed in these times grow according to the series of the odd numbers starting from one.
55)
439
Figure 14: Sagredos representation of the odd-number-law in the Two New Sciences
Sagredos reasoning is appreciated by Simplicio, who comments:

Really I have taken more pleasure from this simple and clear reasoning of Sagredos than from the (for me) more obscure demonstration of the Author, so that I
am better able to see why the matter must proceed in this way.56
It would seem as if Galileo considered the explanatory power of the

diagrams as inversely proportional to the rigor of the proofs accompanying them: the demonstrations contained in the Latin treatise, which
are here labeled as obscure by Simplicio, engender the bipartite diagrams of figure 12 and figure 13, in which the left part, offering a
representation of the time/speed proportionality, appears disconnected
from the right part, representing the odd-number law. Sagredos reasoning, which in Galileos eyes lacks the essential features of a rigorous
demonstration as it conflates the aggregates of speed with space traversed, has the advantage of producing a clear visual representation of
the odd number law by integrating it in the triangle of speeds.
56)
440
7. Pierre Gassendis Version of Galileos Triangle of Speed.

As I mentioned above, Cavalieris idea to replace Galileos triangle of
acceleration with a circle was probably motivated by the need to eliminate from the diagram a vertical line that could have been mistaken
for the time of fall. A similar choice was made by Pierre Gassendi who,
in his Epistolae duae de motu impresso a motore translato, published in
1642, represented the acceleration of fall by means of an isosceles triangle (figure 15), in which time is represented by the oblique lines AK
and AL.
Figure 15: Gassendis triangle of speed (Gassendi, Opera, 3:498a).
It is important to recall, in this context, that, in the Epistolae, Gassendi

presents the acceleration of fall as the result of the joint action of two
forces: the attractive force of gravity, and the impelling force of the air;
both of which are supposed to impart to the body a new degree of speed
in each successive moment of time; but while the vis attrahens is operative from the first moment of time, the vis impellens comes into play
only in the second moment.
When I speak of rst moment I mean the minimum, in which one simple ictus
is impressed by attraction, and a minimum space is traversed with a simple
motion, and to which subsequently degrees of speed can be added by repeated
ictus.57
57)
Igitur cum primum momentum accipio, minimum intelligo, in quo unus, et

simplex ictus per attractionem imprimatur, peragaturque minimum spatium, motu
441
Although Gassendi defines acceleration as uniform and continuous, it

is clear from his words that he conceives of it as a discrete process. In
the lines just quoted he in fact describes the moment of time as an
extended minimum during which the body traverses a minimum of
space with a uniform speed. This means that if only one force acted on
the falling body, the spaces traversed by it would grow not according
to the series of the odd-numbers, but according to that of natural numbers.58 While Galileo had demonstrated that when the degrees of speed
are increased in equal times according to the simple series of natural
numbers, the spaces run through in the same times undergo increases
according with the series of odd numbers from unity,59 Gassendi
believes that, under the action of a single accelerating force, the spaces
traversed in successive moments of time would grow according to the
series of natural numbers, just like the degrees of speed themselves. And
this is why he thinks that only a collaboration between vis attrahens and
vis impellens can bring about an acceleration according to the oddnumber law.
The difference between Gassendis and Galileos diagrams of acceleration lies, however, not only in the choice of the signifiers, but also,
and more importantly, in the selection of the signified. Gassendi attributes no meaning to the bases of the triangles, that is to say to the
segments KO, ON, NM and ML, which Galileo has identified with
the degrees of speed. The latter are represented instead through the
triangles ADE, HKO, ILM, etc., the number of which corresponds to
the spaces traversed. In the trapezium DEFG, the central triangle represents the degree of speed ADE acquired by the falling body in the
first moment of time and preserved in the second moment, while the
two external triangles stand for the two new degrees of speed which the
exsistente simplici, et cui deinceps accedere, ex repetitis ictibus, gradus celeritatis possint, Pierre Gassendi, Opera Omnia, 6 vols. (Lyon, 1658), 3: 497b, translation mine.
58)
Nam fac unicam esse causam, exempli gratia attractionem; concipies quidem . . .
radij magnetici . . . motum, sive impetum lapidi imprimunt . . . in primo momento,
qui non deleatur, sed perseveret in secundo, in quo alius similis imprimitur . . . adeo ut
impetus ex continua illa adiectione continuo increscat, motusque semper velocior at.
Verum facile erit pervidere consequi ex hac adiectione incrementuum celeritas secundum unitatum seriem; nempe ita ut in primo momento sit unus velocitatis gradus, in
secundo sint duo, in tertio tres, in quarto quatuor, ibid., 3: 497a, translation mine.
59)
Galilei, Two New Sciences, 167 (= Galilei, Opere, 8: 210).
442
vis attrahens and the vis impellens have imparted upon the body. In the
same way, in the trapezium FGIH, the three central triangles represent
the degrees of speed which the body acquires in the second moment of
time, while the two external triangles stand for the two newly acquired
degrees of speed.
In the years to come Gassendi realized, however, that his interpretation of the diagram of speed stood in contradiction to Galileos theory
of accelerated motion. This happened in the course of a polemic with
the Jesuit Pierre Le Cazre, who in 1645 published a booklet, the Physica
Demonstratio, which asserted against Galileo: 1) that the speed of fall
grows in proportion with the space, rather than with time, and, 2) that
the spaces traversed by a falling body in successive equal times grow
according to the series of ever doubling numbers, thus as 1, 2, 4, 8,
etc.60 Interestingly, the diagram accompanying Cazres demonstration
was similar to the one used by Galileo in the letter to Sarpi, for the
Jesuit limited himself to drawing a vertical line representing space, and
noted on it the points at which new degrees of speed were acquired.
In the same year, 1645, Gassendi sent a letter to Cazre, in which he
highlighted the main contradictions of the Physica Demonstratio. What
is relevant to the present discussion is that passage of the letter in which
Gassendi tried to prove that Cazres definition of naturally accelerated
motion was incompatible with a diagrammatic representation of the
law of fall.
Gassendi began by drawing the line AB, representing the space of
fall, and then divided it into nine equal parts AC, CD, DE, etc., at the
end of each of which the body was supposed to acquire a new degree
of speed (figure 16). Now, if one represented these degrees of speed by
means of small triangles, like ALC, CMD, LCM, and so on, one could
see that
from C to D, the speed has not grown uniformly and with the same ratio with
which it had begun and had continued as far as D; for if it had, it would not have
described the rectangle LD, which is composed of two triangles, but the trape-
Pierre Le Cazre, Physica demonstratio (Paris, 1645). For an analysis of Cazres theory
of acceleration, see Carla Rita Palmerino, Two Aristotelian Responses to Galileis
Science of Motion: Honor Fabri and Pierre Le Cazre, in e New Science and Jesuit
Science, ed. Mordechai Feingold (Dodrecht, 2003), 187-227, esp. 206-208.
60)
443
zium CN, which is made of three of them. For the same reason it is clear that if
three triangles were adapted to DE, two would still be missing []. We therefore
understand that the degrees of speed which are missing in order to obtain the uniformity of acceleration are as many as the triangles which we count on the left in
completing the sum of the triangles contained in APB. It is therefore clear that
one cannot dene as uniformly accelerated a motion that acquires equal increments
of speed in equal spaces, but instead one which acquires equal increments [of speed]
in equal times.61
To paraphrase Gassendis reasoning: if the speed of free fall augments

in a uniform manner, then it must be possible to represent the acceleration of a body in various intervals of space or time by means of
similar geometrical figures. These figures cannot be but triangles, given
that only the areas of triangles possess the property of growing uniformly and with the same ratio. And finally, since only the hypothesis
of a direct proportionality between the degree of speed attained and
the time elapsed will result in a triangular representation of the acceleration of fall, the definition of Galileo must be preferred to Cazres.62
It is therefore as if Gassendi interpreted the absence of any bi-dimensional diagram representing the joint growth of space and speed from
Cazres Physica demonstratio as a sign of the fallacy of the law of the ever
doubling numbers.
By reasoning on diagram 16, Gassendi also realized that his own
theory of acceleration, as presented in the Epistolae de motu, relied on
the non-Galilean assumption that the speeds were in the same proportion as the spaces.63 Instead of drawing a new diagram of acceleration,
61)
Nihil est opus, ut desudem ad ostendendum non increvisse velocitatem aequabiliter, eodemve tenore ex C in D, quo incoeperat, perrexeratque usque in D; ut fecisset
enim, oporteret descriptum esse non quadrangulum LD constans ex duobus triangulis;
sed trapezion CN constitutum ex tribus. Eadem autem ratione manifestum est, si ad
DE aptentur tria triangula, defutura duo; si ad EF quatuor, defutura tria, et ita deinceps
. . . ut proinde intelligamus totidem deesse ad accelerationis aequabilitatem velocitatis
gradus, quot numerare licet triangulos ad laevam e regione cuiusque partis, complendo
summam traingulorum APB. Constare ergo videtur Motum aequabiliter acceleratum
deniri non posse illum Qui aequabilibus spatiis aequalia celeritatis augmenta acquirat;
sed potius illum, Qui acquirat aequalia aequalibus temporibus, Gassendi, Opera, 3:
567b, translation mine.
62)
Ibid., 3: 567b-568a.
63)
Ibid., 3: 621b.
444
Figure 16: Gassendis confutation of Cazres principle (Gassendi, Opera, 3: 597b)
he reproduced the isosceles triangle used in the Epistolae de motu, but

interpreted it in a new way.
In figure 17, the segments into which the lines AB and AC are
divided still represent the equal moments of time, and the small triangles which make up the large triangle AKL continue to represent the
intervals of space traversed by the falling body. This time, however, the
degrees of speed are no longer indicated by the surfaces, but by the bases
of these triangles. When giving the reason for this change, Gassendi
explains that the first interval of time AE is not an indivisible entity,
but can be divided into so many instants or timelets as exist points or
particles in AE (or AD), and that the velocity grows from the beginning throughout the entire first time, and can be represented by as many
lines as there are parallels to DE that can be drawn between the points
of the lines AD and AE.64 Gassendi has therefore come to realize that
a falling body does not accelerate in jumps, and that its speed grows
continuously within each interval of time. For this reason, the degree
of speed reached at the end of an interval of time is sufficient to traverse
64)
... ut primum tempus AE non est individuum, sed in tot instantia, seu temporula
potest dividi, quot sunt puncta particulaeve in ipsa AE (aut AD) ita neque gradus velocitatis individuus est, seu uno instanti, acquisitus totus; sed ab usque initio per totum
primum tempus increscit, ac repraesentari potest per tot lineas, quot possunt parallelae duci ipsi DE inter puncta linearum AD, et AE, ibid., p. 566a, translation mine.
445
Figure 17: Gassendis reinterpretation of the triangle of speed (Gassendi, Opera,

3:566a).
a space twice as large in the following interval. The eventual consequence of these new insights is that Gassendi understands that he can
simplify his causal explanation of the motion of free fall. In his last
letter to Cazre, written in response to the Jesuits Vindiciae demonstrationis physicae (1645), he recognizes that one single force is enough to
bring about an acceleration according to the series of the odd numbers.
8. Conclusion
In the famous passage of the Assayer in which he compares nature to a
book written by God, Galileo declares that the characters of that book
are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it
is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word of it.65 Far from
being a rhetorical claim, this assertion is grounded in the conviction
that the ultimate composition of physical magnitudes corresponds to
that of geometrical objects.
Indeed, the triangles and circles mentioned in the Assayer play a
central role in the Two New Sciences. It is by means of two concentric
circles that Galileo tries to prove, in the First Day, that matter, space,
time and motion are all composed of an infinite number of nonextended indivisibles; and it is by means of triangles that he demonstrates, in the Third Day, the fundamental propositions of his theory
Galileo Galilei, e Assayer, in e Controversy on the Comets, transl. by S. Drake
and C.D. OMalley (Philadelphia, 1960), 151-336, here at 184.
65)
446
of accelerated motion. In introducing his second new science, Galileo

observes that
ere is nothing wrong with inventing at pleasure some kind of motion and theorizing about its consequent properties, in the way that some men have derived
spiral and conchoidal lines from certain motions, though nature makes no use of
these paths (). But since nature does employ a certain kind of acceleration for
descending heavy things, we decided to look into their properties so that we might
be sure that the denition of accelerated motion which we are about to adduce
agrees with the essence of naturally accelerated motion. And at length, after continual agitation of mind, we are condent that this has been found, chiey for the
very powerful reason that the essentials successively demonstrated by us correspond to, and are seen to be in agreement with, that which physical experiments
show forth to the senses.66
In his derivation of the law of fall, Galileo allowed himself to be guided

by two principles. The first is that of the simplicity of nature, which
led him to conclude that no simpler addition and increase can be
discovered other than that which is added on always in the same way.
The second principle is that of the continuity of acceleration, which
states that speed may be increased or diminished in infinitum, according to the extension of time.
These two principles, taken together, can be translated in what I
would call the principle of representability of acceleration. If it is true
that the speed of fall increases continuously and that in each successive
instant of time a falling body acquires a new degree of speed, then it
must be possible to represent intervals of time and degrees of speed by
means of proportional lines, and to represent acceleration by means of
a continuously growing surface like that of a triangle. This is why, rather
than regarding the diagrams of motion as a static complement to
mathematical demonstrations, one should try to follow in parallel the
successive steps in the reasoning and in the construction of the figure.
As we have seen, the fact that Galileo starts building figures 12 and 13
from the line representing space is essential to understand the unfolding
of his demonstration.
66)
Galilei, Two New Sciences, 153 (= Opere, 8: 197).
447
It would seem, moreover, as if the difficulties encountered in the

construction of the diagrams helped Galileo and his followers to detect
fallacies in their own reasoning. It is, I would argue, not too daring to
assume that Galileo abandoned the hypothesis of the proportionality
between the degree of velocity and the space traversed when he understood that it was impossible, on the basis of that hypothesis, to build a
diagram representing all the essential parameters of acceleration; or that
Gassendi changed his mind about the double cause of free fall when he
realized that in his first diagram the representation of space was conflated with the representation of speed.
Finally, it should have become clear that in their attempts to geometrize motion, Galileo, Cavalieri and Gassendi regarded their respective
diagrams of acceleration not as a conventional representation of the law
of fall, but as a way to mimic the behavior of falling bodies. We have
seen, for example, that Cavalieri compared the acceleration of a falling
body to the expansion of a circle from the centre to the periphery, and
that he resorted to the example of two rolling circles to solve a difficulty
concerning the descent of bodies along different inclined planes. It was
also interesting to see that when the Sagredo of the Two New Sciences
produces his fanciful diagram showing the simultaneous growth of
space, time and speed, Simplicio expresses his satisfaction for being
finally able to see with clarity why acceleration must happen this way.
However, Galileos scruples about the legitimacy of identifying the
aggregate of speed with the spaces traversed prevented him from
using Sagredos diagram as an official representation of free fall.
Gassendi, who did not share Galileos scruples, and quite probably
because he did not even understand them, chose, like Sagredo, for a
clear diagram, which would allow the reader to visualize the oddnumber law immediately. More strongly, he interpreted the fact that
the odd number law could be inscribed into a triangle in which space,
time and speed found a simultaneous representation, as the ultimate
proof of its validity.

E Geometrization of Motion: Galileo's Triangle of Speed and Its Various Transformations

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Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

e Geometrization of Motion: Galileos Triangle of

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

Samuel Y. Edgerton, e Renaissance Development of Scientic Illustrations, in

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

only did the Renaissance scientific picture give precise information

Edgerton, e Renaissance Development, 169.

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

Figure 1: Oresmes representation of the Mean Speed eorem (Clagett, Nicole

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

asserts to be proportional to the space traversed, represented by the

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

erence to interpret the line of extension as representing time, and its

Matthias Schemmel, e English Galileo: omas Harriots Work on Motion as an

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

3. e Evolution of Galileos Diagrams of Acceleration from the

Figure 3: Diagram accompanying Galileos letter to Sarpi of 16 October 1604 (Galilei,

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

The question of how Galileo managed to derive a correct law from a

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Figure 4: Ms. 72, fol.

Figure 5: Ms. 72, fol. 163v: An accelerated motion

of figures 4 and 5, to offer a demonstration of the so-called Double

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

The rest is demonstrated by means of figure 6.

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As already observed by scholars, this passage contains two mistakes:

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

Figure 7: Ms. 72 91v.

As is well known, the first published formulation of Galileos law of free

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

Figure 8: e demonstration of the Double Distance Rule in the Dialogue (Galilei,

While in folio 128 r, discussed above, Galileo inferred the continuity

Ibid., 228-229 (= Opere, 7: 255).

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A comparison between the diagram of the Dialogue (fig. 8) and that

Ibid., 229 (= Opere, 7: 255).

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the surface abc), and no representation of the time elapsed, figure 8

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C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

Although the official goal of Galileos analysis of the paradox was to

C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

Cavalieris words may have been a source of inspiration for Galileo,

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claim that there is no motion without speed would be the same as to

Galileo illustrated his conclusion by means of figure 10, which shows

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C.R. Palmerino / Early Science and Medicine 15 (2010) 410-447

Ibid., 38 (=Opere, 8: 76-77).

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space is traversed by a body in uniformly accelerated motion from rest

Blay and Festa, Mouvement, continu, 94.

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Galilei, Two New Sciences, 165-166 (= Galilei, Opere, 8: 208-209).

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Ibid., 167 (= Galilei, Opere, 8: 210).

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