From Galileo to Navier and Clapeyron: The intuition of a genius versus engineering rigour

Galileo (1564-1642), in his well-known Discorsi (Galileo, 1638), briefly turning his attention to the fracture of a beam, starts an interesting discussion on the beam’s breakage as well as its location. Could the section and breaking point of a beam have been determined beforehand? Furthermore, is it specific to the material? What Galileo did was not merely challenge a physics problem, but the prevailing knowledge of his time: namely, Aristotelianism on one hand, and Nominalism on the other. As a matter of fact, must the breakage of an element be treated as a universal or is it particular to a given material? The present essay aims to prove how Galileo, confronting the structural problem and bringing it into the realm of science, was not just raising a problem but, using Salviati’s words, he also established what actually takes place. Many years later, with the progress of physics, strength of materials and theory of structures, figures such as Claude Navier (1785-1836) and Benoît Clapeyron (1799-1864) confirmed once again that the Pisan turned out to be right. This article intends to combine technical fields such as strength of materials and theory of structures with others like the history of science and philosophy proper. A cooperative approach to these disciplines can be doubtlessly helpful to improve the knowledge, learning and teaching of their different curricula, giving the reader a global, holistic perspective.