Chapter Six: Niccolò Tartaglia and the Science of Weights

Niccolò Tartaglia (b. 1499/1500) adopted the Aristotelian Mechanical Problems as his model and attempted to found its treatment of the balance on the principles of the medieval science of weights. Prompted by his patron Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Tartaglia devoted book seven of his Quesiti to the first two questions of the Mechanical Problems, and book eight to reworking the medieval science of weights. Despite his familiarity with Archimedes’ Equilibrium of Planes and centres of gravity, they had no place in his mechanics. Instead, Tartaglia relied entirely on the science of weights, and his mechanics never went beyond explanations of the balance.