The New Science

A

For this reason, all the gunnersoriginal: "bombardieri"; operators of heavy artillery or "bombards." and others were convinced of our conclusion, whereas before this experimentoriginal: "isperientia"; in the 16th century, this term encompassed both personal experience and a structured practical test. they remained uncertain; indeed, the majority held the contrary opinion, as it seemed to them that such a piece of artillery was aimed too high. But even more, I desire that Your Most Illustrious Lordship know that one of three things must be true: either those measuring made an error in the measurement; or the truth was not reported to me; or the second gunner loaded his piece more diligently than the first. Because, Excellent Sir, reason shows us that the second (that is, he who fired two pointsoriginal: "ponti"; the graduated divisions on a gunner's quadrant used to measure the barrel's angle. lower) fired somewhat further than he should have in proportion to the first, or that the first fired somewhat less than he ought to have in proportion to the second—as Your Lordship will shortly be able to recognize and see in the fourth book, where we shall treat the proportion of shots.

And let your Magnanimity know that, having been awakened then in such matters, I decided I wanted to investigate further. And I began (and not without reason) to reason about the types of motion that could occur in a heavy bodyoriginal: "corpo graue"; in Aristotelian physics, this refers to objects made of earth or water that have a natural tendency to move downward., whereupon I found those to be two, namely: natural and violentoriginal: "naturale, & uiolente." Natural motion is an object moving to its natural place, like a stone falling. Violent motion is movement caused by an external force, like a shot being fired.. And I found these to be totally opposite in their characteristics by means of their opposite effects; I also found, through reasoning evident to the intellect, that it is impossible for a heavy body to move with a mixture of natural and violent motion together.

Afterward (Most Serene Lord), I investigated with geometric, demonstrative reasoning the quality of the transits or violent motions of said heavy bodies, according to the various ways they can be ejected or thrown violently through the air. Beyond this, I confirmed with geometric, demonstrative reasoning that all the shots of every kind of artillery—whether large or small—when equally elevated above the horizontal plane, or equally oblique, or along the horizontal plane, were similar to one another and consequently proportional, as were their distances. Then I recognized (Most Kind Lord)...