[831] Panzer.
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1520 to 1550.
Sect. I.
On Mathematical and Physical Science.
Geometrical treatises. 1. The first translation of Euclid from the Greek text was made by Zamberti of Venice, and appeared in 1505. It was republished at Basle in 1537. The Spherics of Theodosius and the Conics of Apollonius were translated by men, it is said, more conversant with Greek than with geometry. A higher praise is due to Werner of Nuremberg, the first who aspired to restore the geometrical analysis of the ancients. The treatise of Regiomontanus on triangles was first published in 1533. It may be presumed that its more important contents were already known to geometers. Montucla hints that the editor Schæner may have introduced some algebraic solutions which appear in this work; but there seems no reason to doubt, that Regiomontanus was sufficiently acquainted with that science. The treatise of Vitello on optics, which belongs to the thirteenth century, was first printed in 1533.[832]
[832] Montucla, Kästner.
Fernel. 2. Oronce Finée, with some reputation in his own times, has, according to Montucla, no pretension to the name of a geometer; and another Frenchman, Fernel, better known as a physician, who published a Cosmotheoria in 1527, though he first gave the length of a degree of the meridian, and came not far from the truth, arrived at it by so unscientific a method, being in fact no other than counting the revolutions of a wheel along the main road, that he cannot be reckoned much higher.[833] |Rhœticus.| These are obscure names in comparison with Joachim, surnamed Rhœticus from his native country. After the publication of the work of Regiomontanus on trigonometry, he conceived the project of carrying those labours still further; and calculated the sines, tangents, and secants, the last of which he first reduced to tables, for every minute of the quadrant, to a radius of unity followed by fifteen cyphers; one of the most remarkable monuments, says Montucla, of human patience, or rather of a devotion to science, the more meritorious that it could not be attended with much glory. But this work was not published till 1594, and then not so complete as Rhœticus had left it.[834]
[833] Montucla, ii. 316. Kästner, ii. 329.
[834] Montucla, i. 582. Biogr. Univ., art. Joachim Kästner, i. 561.