Information
Romae, Ex Typographia Iacobi Komarek Bohemi apud Angelum Custodem, MDCLXXXVIII (1688). Folio, pp. (8) frontispiece, large vignette engraved with heraldic coat of arms supported by two winged putti; 96 (between pages 86/87 inserted an appendix sheet numbered 86, "Appendix" with subscription on the reverse: Romae: typis Ioannis Iacobi Komarek, 1689). Some light redness. Contemporary binding in full parchment, calligraphic title on the spine.
Specialist Notes
Some bibliographies report a non-existent edition, never described, published in 1686. Fundamentum doctrinae motus gravium is the definitive and most complete response to the Specimen de Momentis gravium by the Jesuit Giovanni Francesco Vanni (Rome, 1684). Vanni attempted to refute the Galilean-Torricellian proposition according to which the ratio between the components of the weights of a body on an inclined plane and of the perpendicular is equal to that between the vertical height and the length of the inclined plane. Giordani demonstrates the correctness of the Galilean-Torricellian proposition through four theorems, in which he assumes the Galilean propositions on bodies falling in gravity. Giordano (1633-1711) was born in Bitonto. After a dissolute youth, during which he killed his brother-in-law, he joined the fleet that Innocent X was preparing to move against the Ottomans. In addition to numerous duels, arrests and convictions (one for murder, which was pardoned), Giordano developed a passion for mathematics in this period, which he learned to provide for the administration of the ship on which he served. In 1659 he returned to Rome, was appointed first custodian and then engineer of the castle of Sant'Angelo by Clement X, and decided to dedicate his life to science and mathematics, establishing relationships with Borelli and Ricci. In 1685 he was awarded the chair of mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza in 1685, and admitted to the Accademia degli Arcadi in 1691. 1680 Giordano publishes his Euclide restituto which contains an important contribution to Euclidean, the work for which he is best known today: he introduces the geometric figure now known as 'Saccheri's quadrilateral', after its use by Girolamo Saccheri in his Euclides ab omni naevo vindicatus  ;(Milan, 1733). See Vitale Giordano: a mathematician from Bitonto in Francesco Tampoia's baroque Rome, pag. 42.