PER UN ARCHIVIO DELLA CORRISPONDENZA DEGLI SCIENZIATI ITALIANI MATEMATICA ED ERUDIZIONE. GIOVANNI ALFONSO BORELLI E L'EDIZIONE FIORENTINA DEI LIBRI V, VI E VII DELLE CONICHE DI APOLLONIO DI PERGA

Abstract

Abstracttitle SUMMARY /title As a consequence of the recovery of thirty-four of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli's letters to Carlo Roberto Dati relevant to the Florentine edition of the V, VI and VII books of Apollonius of Perga's CONICHE (1661), the article completes the known reconstruction of the various stages of the preparation of the edition with previously unknown events and gives some information about the meaning of some philological and mathematical controversy to which it gave rise. The letters show to the reader the lofty cultural quality of the edition of 1661 and enlighten the seventeenth-century debates on the genuineness of the codicological tradition as the means of transmission of the mathematical books of ancient times. The intellectual connexion between the letterato Carlo Roberto Dati and the mathematician Giovanni Alfonso Borelli gives furthermore a proof of the very close links binding erudition and science in seventeenth-century Italy.