ACHILLINI, Alessandro.

De Proportionibus Motuum.

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Woodcut printer’s device at foot of final leaf. 16 leaves. Folio, modern boards. [Bologna: Hieronymus Platonicus de Benedictis, 1515]. The earliest surviving edition of this extremely rare work, a “presentation of Achillini’s research in the field of dynamics. A proponent of the Peripatetic School and an Averroist, Achillini criticizes Bradwardine’s attempts to modify the Aristotelian approach to motion… “‘In his treatise on the proportion of motion Achillini raised the question whether more recent mathematicians had detected Aristotle in error on that subject. He further asked whether the proportion of velocities in motions was equal to the proportion of proportions moving to their resistances. He cited Euclid, Averroes, and that stalwart medieval trio, Jordanus, Campanus, and Calculator, more than once. He thought that moderns such as Paul of Venice, Albertutius (i.e. Albert of Saxony), and Thomas Bradwardine erred from the ancient mathematicians because they were unwilling to insert between two extremes like eight and one any mean which was not smaller than the greater number and greater than the lesser number. Jordanus, on the contrary, did not care whether the mean was greater or less than the extreme.’–Thorndike: V, 41… “Stillwell: 718 lists his De distributionibus ac De Proportione motuum, 1494, noting that though it is cited by the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke on the basis of Hain, Maittaire, and Panzer, no copy of that edition is known to exist. Apparently ignorant of the present edition, Stillwell cites its appearance in the Opera omnia, Venice, 1545, as the earliest available.”–Roberts & Trent, Bibliotheca Mechanica, p. 5. Achillini (1463-1512), graduated from Bologna in 1484 with his doctorate in both medicine and philosophy. “He is remembered for his considerable activity in research on human anatomy. He gave a good description of the veins of the arm, and he described the seven bones of tarsus, the fornix of the brain, the cerebral ventricles, the infundibulum, and the trochlear nerve. He also described, exactly, the ducts of the submaxillary salivary glands…Finally, to Achillini is attributed the first description of the two ossicles of the ear, the malleus and incus.”–D.S.B., I, p. 46. Achillini was highly regarded as a teacher. Fine copy. Ex Bibliotheca Mechanica.

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