Mario Bettinus

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Mario Bettinus
Frontispiece of Mario Bettini's Aerarium Philosophiae Mathematicae. An elderly Jesuit man (possibly Bettini himself), gestures towards the garden at right, where young men enjoy mathematic instruments, which are also being used by the statues that surround the loggia in the middle ground.
Born(1582-02-06)February 6, 1582
philosopher
  • scientist
    • Known forApiaria Universae Philosophiae Mathematicae
    Scientific career
    Notable students

    Mario Bettinus (

    Giovanni Riccioli in 1651.[1]

    Biography

    Mario Bettinus studied mathematics under the Belgian Jean Verviers and

    Ranuccio, Ottavio and Odoardo. Besides being Ottavio's teacher of military mathematics, Bettinus also served as military consultant to the courts of Parma (1612–1613), Modena (1617–1618) and again Parma (1626–1627), and as a military architect at Novellara (1618–1619), seat of the novitiate of the Jesuit ‘Provincia Veneta’.[3]

    Bettinus was primarily a mathematician and mathematical physicist. He labeled himself a philosophus mathematicus, meaning a scholar who relies on mathematics to study natural philosophy.[4] Bettinus was somewhat ambivalent towards Galileo's Copernicanism and his new astronomical observations. Although generally recognizing the importance of Galileo's discoveries, he disagreed with some of the conclusions expounded in Sidereus Nuncius especially over the height of the mountains on the moon.[5] According to Bettini, if there were very high mountains on the Moon, the lunar disk observed with the telescope would appear irregular and jagged, while on the contrary, it looked perfectly round.[6] Bettini's objections echoed the doubts raised in Johannes Kepler's Dissertatio cum Nuntio Sidereo.[7] Giovanni Riccioli, who heard Bettinus lecture at Parma, mentions his attempts to measure the heights of lunar mountains.

    Besides being the mentor of

    method of indivisibles and the theory of the infinitesimal quantities.[10]

    Works

    Bettinus privileged mathematics, intended as the only discipline abstract enough to allow intellect to approach theology. The Jesuit mathematician held the belief that, precisely because of their abstraction, mathematical theorems and demonstrations lead one away from the mundane and toward the divine. On the contrary, he considered a research based on sense as too bound to human limitations (and, therefore, unreliable). Yet, Bettinus was a skilled astronomer; and clues of experimental knowledge are all but invisible in his work.[11]

    His best-known work is Apiaria Universae Philosophiae Mathematicae 'Beehives of all mathematical philosophy' (1645), an encyclopedic collection of mathematical curiosities.[12] This book, reflecting his many interests, is a collection of scientific mysteries embracing everything from geometrical demonstrations to illusionistic stage sets, perpetual motion machines, anamorphoses and sundials.[13] The second volume has a section on music and acoustics. According to Bettinus, the natural world abounds in mathematical delights such as spider webs and the honeycombs of bees. From these creations of nature can be drawn geometrical principles useful for mechanical, optical, and artistic designs.[14] The Apiaria surveys a staggering array of instruments, machines, and other tangible applications of mathematical principles. It is illustrated with beautiful engravings of these machines, which – Bettini points out – are rough imitations of the great and perfect mechanisms provided by nature. The work included a commentary on the first six books of Euclid, a traditional part of Jesuit mathematical curriculum and a form followed by Clavius a half century earlier.[15]

    In his Apiaria military technologies featured prominently. His machines of war were mentioned by Montecuccoli, by the famous Jesuit mathematicians Athanasius Kircher and Jacques Ozanam and by the Polish master of artillery, Casimir Semenowycz. The book was a huge success throughout Europe. It was read by John Collins and Isaac Barrow[16] and a copy of it can be found in the library of the English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne.[17]

    Publications

    Moon crater named after Bettinus

    See also

    • List of Jesuit scientists
    • List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics

    References

    1. ^ Scott, John M., S.J. (Fall 1995), "34 Jesuits on the Moon" (PDF), Creighton University Window: 12–15{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
    2. ^ Aricò 1996, p. 209.
    3. ISBN 9789004216518
      .
    4. ISBN 9780190639655
      .
    5. ^ Piccolino, Marco; Wade, Nicholas J. (2014). Galileo's Visions. Piercing the Spheres of the Heavens by Eye and Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 89.
    6. ^ Denise Aricò, ""In Doctrinis Glorificate Dominum': Alcuni aspetti della ricezione di Clavio nella produzione scientifica di Mario Bettini," in Christoph Clavius e l'attività scientifica dei Gesuiti nelletà di Galileo, Ugo Baldini, ed. (Rome: Bulzoni: 1995), 189-207, especially 191-196.
    7. ^ See Kepler, J. Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger, with an introduction and notes by E. Rosen (New York, 1965). pp. 28-9.
    8. Kluwer, pp. 4–7, archived from the original
      on March 13, 2005.
    9. ^ Aricò 1996, p. 69.
    10. ^ Gatto 2019, p. 646.
    11. hdl:10278/3743272
      .
    12. ISBN 9780387489469
      .
    13. ^ Bettinus penned a method for laying out a sundial which was posthumously published in the book Recreationum Mathematicarum Apiaria Novissima 1660.
    14. ISBN 9780944722107
      .
    15. ISBN 0262062348
      .
    16. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198863953.003.0011
      .
    17. ISBN 978-9004617612
      .
    18. ISBN 9780691650487
      .

    Bibliography

    External links

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