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ZUCCHI, Nicolo (1586-1670). Nova de machinis philosophia in qua, paralogismis antiquae detectis, explicantur machinarum vires unico principio, singulis immediato. Rome: heirs of Manelfo Manelfi, 1649.
First edition of this Jesuit attack on Galilean atomism and vacuum theory, with one of the first published accounts of barometric experiments, including the Torricelli barometer. As Redondi notes, the barometric tube was to the birth of modern physics what the telescope was to astronomy.
The original work, Experimenta vulgata non vacuum probare, sed plenum, & antiperistasim stabilire (Rome, 1648), is of exceptional rarity, the British Library having the only recorded copy (misleadingly catalogued under Valerianus Maximus). This 21-page account includes a description of Gaspare Berti’s initial experiments of creating a vacuum in a column of water, which were perhaps carried out at the suggestion of Galileo, and Zucchi’s own experiments with a mercury barometer. Zucchi, a Jesuit professor of mathematics in the Collegio Romano, was motivated to refute the existence of a vacuum, and proposed instead a concept akin to the ether to account for the void at the top of the column of mercury.
This work is reprinted, with some slight alterations of text, in the Nova, where it occupies pages 101–122. As is clear not only from Middleton’s History of the Barometer, but also from Redondi’s researches into the Jesuit opposition to Galileo, Zucchi’s text is fundamental both to the experimental foundations of physics in Italy during the Galilean twilight, and to the hidden agenda behind much of the attacks on Galilean physics.
Gaspare Berti’s experiments on the existence of vacuums in the early 1640s attracted a great deal of attention. Zucchi, along with Kircher and Maignan, was a witness to the experiments, and also published the first account of them here. Pages 101-122 contain an account of the Torricelli barometer. Sommervogel VIII 1526 5; see Redondi, Galileo: Heretic.
Quarto (198 x 150mm). Woodcut illustrations and diagrams (some dampstaining mostly at end, browning to some gatherings). Contemporary Italian limp vellum (lacking ties). Provenance: Jesuits of Ghent (inscription and faded stamp).