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BORELLI, GIOVANNI ALFONSO(b. Naples, Italy,
January 1608; d. Rome, Italy, 31 December 1679),
astronomy, epidemiology, mathematics, physiology
(iatromechanics), physics, volcanology.
Borelli is not as widely known or appreciated as
perhaps he should be. What reputation he has is
based upon his mechanics, including celestial mechanics,
and his physiology or iatromechanics. The
former, unfortunately, was quickly and completely
overshadowed by the work of Isaac Newton; and his
iatromechanics, although important and influential,
was too much informed by what proved to be a
relatively sterile systematic bias to bear much immediate
fruit. Accordingly historians have undervalued
his place in the development of the sciences
in the seventeenth century, and they have paid little
attention to his career or his personality. (There has
been no lengthy treatment of his life since the eighteenth
century, and important and elementary biographical
information is still hard to come by.) But
he was highly respected by his contemporaries. He
read widely, and he drew his scientific inspiration
from a broad spectrum of the heroes and near-heroes
of the early seventeenth century: such men as Galileo
Galilei, William Harvey, Johannes Kepler, and Santorio
Santorio. He worked on many problems, contributed
significantly to all the topics he touched, and
in fact played an important part in establishing and
extending the new experimental-mathematical philosophy.
He was brilliant enough scientifically to be
very much ahead of his time, even if he was not quite
brilliant enough nor free enough from other commitments
to produce general synthetic solutions in his
fields of interest which would be either successful or
entirely convincing.
During the century prior to Borelli's birth, Italians
had been in the forefront of the late Renaissance
effort to translate and master the Alexandrian astronomers,
mathematicians, and physiologists. By the
end of that century many had learned all they could
from the past and had begun to strike out on their
own. Galileo's telescopic discoveries only dramatically
underscored the fact that major innovations were
underway in all fields of natural philosophy. And they
also indicated that the Italians could be expected to
continue playing a leading role in these new enterprises.
But during Borelli's lifetime the world saw
Galileo condemned for his innovations, the Lincei
persecuted, the Cimento disbanded, and the Investiganti
of Naples suspended. It also saw the death, in
the decade of the 1640's, of many of Galileo's most
talented disciples: Benedetto Castelli, Bonaventura
Cavalieri, Vincenzo Renieri, and Evangelista Torricelli.
Borelli's Italy rejoiced over the conversion
of Queen Christina of Sweden and perhaps was as
much interested in the fact of Nicholas Steno's conversion
as in his scientific accomplishments. Moreover,
it was a politically fragmented Italy, portions
of which were absorbed in struggles to throw off
oppressive foreign domination. And later on its best
investigators, for example, Marcello Malpighi and
Gian Domenico Cassini, had to find recognition and
support north of the Alps. In sum, the new philosophy
faced distracting competition and even open hostility
from several quarters, and in the long run the Italians
could find neither the wherewithal nor the enthusiasm
to support science in the ways it was beginning
to be supported elsewhere. Borelli's career, then, is
an illuminating record of an original scientist who
was also politically active in Counter-Reformation
Italy. Borelli himself ended his life in political exile in
Rome—poverty stricken, teaching elementary mathematics.
Borelli's birth was not auspicious. As part of their
rule of southern Italy at the turn of the century, the
Spanish maintained military garrisons in the three
principal fortresses of Naples. On 28 January 1608,
a Spanish infantryman, Miguel Alonso, stationed at
Castel Nuovo, witnessed the baptism of his first son,
Giovanni Francesco Antonio. The mother was a local
woman by the name of Laura Porrello (variously
spelled in the records as porrello, porrella, borrella,
borriello, borrelli). The couple went on to have one
daughter and four more sons, including a Filippo
baptized 9 March 1614. In later years both Giovanni
and Filippo used Borelli as a family name; Giovanni
dropped two of his baptismal names but retained an