- Niccolo Cabeo
Niccolò Cabeo (
February 26 ,1586 –June 30 ,1650 ) was an ItalianJesuit philosopher .He was born in
Ferrara, Italy in 1586, and was educated at the Jesuit college inParma beginning in 1602. He passed the next two years inPadova and spent 1606-07 studying inPiacenza before completing three years (1607-10) of study in philosophy at Parma. He spent another four years (1612-1616) studying theology in Parma and another year’s apprenticeship at Mantova. He then taughttheology andmathematics inParma , then in 1622 he became a preacher. For a time he received patronage of the Dukes of Mantua and theEste in Ferrara. During this time he was involved inhydraulics projects. He would later return to teach mathematics again inGenoa , the city where he would die in 1650.He is noted for his contributions to
physics experiments and observations. He observed the experiments ofGiovanni Battista Baliani regarding falling objects, and he wrote about these experiments noting that two different objects fall in the same amount of time regardless of the medium. He also performed experiments withpendulum s, and observed that an electrically-charged body can attract non-electrified objects. He also noted that two charged objects repelled each other.His observations were published in the works, "Philosophia magnetica" (1629) and "In quatuor libros meteorologicorum Aristotelis commentaria" (1646). The first of these works examined the cause of the Earth's
magnetism and was devoted to a study of the work ofWilliam Gilbert . Cabeo thought the Earth immobile, and so did not accept its motion as the cause of the magnetic field. Cabeo described electrical attraction in terms of electrical effluvia, released by rubbing certain materials together. These effluvia pushed into the surrounding air displacing it. When the air returned to its original location, it carried light bodies along with it making them move towards the attractive material. Both Accademia del Cimento and Robert Boyle performed experiments with vacuums in attempts to confirm or refute Cabeo's ideas.Cabeo's second publication was a commentary on Aristotle's "Meteorology". In this work, he carefully examined a number of ideas proposed by Galileo including the motion of the earth and the law of falling bodies. Cabeo was opposed to Galileo's theories. Cabeo also discussed the theory of water flow proposed by Galileo's student,
Benedetto Castelli . He and Castelli were involved over a dispute in northern Italy about the rerouting of theReno River . The people of Ferrara were on one side of the dispute and Cabeo was their advocate. Castelli favored the other side of the dispute and was acting as an agent of the Pope,Urban VIII . Cabeo also discussed some ideas aboutalchemy in this book.Cabeus crater on the
Moon was named for him.References
*Heilbron, J.L., "Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries". Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979.
*Maffioli, Cesare, "Out of Galileo, The Science of Waters 1628-1718". Rotterdam: Erasmus Publishing, 1994.
*Sommervogel (ed), "Bibliotheque de la Compagnie de Jesus". Brussels: 1960.
*Gillispie, Charles Coulston (ed), "Dictionary of Scientific Biography" Vol. 3. New York: Scribners, 1973
*Borgato, Maria Teresa, "Niccolò Cabeo tra teoria ed esperimenti: le leggi del moto", in G.P. Brizzi and R. Greci (ed), Gesuiti e Università in Europa, Bologna: Clueb, 2002, pp. 361-385.
*Dear, Peter. "Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution". Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. and hehehe
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