Heritage and Rupture with the Tradition Hydraulics, from the Greek word ὑδrαulιkóB (hydraulikos), which in turn originates from ὕδor (hydor, water) and αὐlóB (aulos, pipe), is the science that deals with the laws governing water or other liquids in motion and their applications in engineering. It follows that in sixteenth century hydraulics was still considered a craftsman's product, and therefore still an art, but not yet a science, and this was to be the case at least until the middle of seventeenth century. The major advances in Hydraulics occurred in the Renaissance concerned hydrostatics, hydrokinematics, and experimental hydraulics, whereas, the major breakthroughs in Hydraulic Engineering concerned Navigation, Irrigation and Aqueducts. Progresses in hydraulics and hydraulic engineering achieved during Renaissance represent milestones in the history of hydraulics, due to the revival of classical influences and the rediscovery of classical sources by the humanists. The Renaissance was a time of great intellectual growth and rebirth for Hydraulics. Hydraulics is a technology and then an applied science using engineering and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. The first to express a (purely ideological) high appreciation is Ramus in 1569, and the first to make creative use of his mathematics was Viète in the 1590s. The Northern Renaissance only discovered Archimedes in the 1530s, and for long only superficially. Over the century, a number of editions also appeared, the editio princeps in 1544, and mathematical work following in the footsteps of Archimedes was made by Maurolico, Commandino and others. Valla drew knowledge of the person as well as his works from Proclus and Pappus, thus integrating the two. Giorgio Valla’s posthumous De expetendis et fugiendis rebus from 1501 marks a watershed. In mid-century, a new translation of most works from the Greek was made by Jacopo Cremonensis, and Regiomontanus and a few other mathematicians began resurrecting the image of the geometer, yet without emulating him in their own work. In the 15th century, however, “higher artisans” with Humanist connections or education took interest in Archimedes the technician and started identifying with him. With the exception of Petrarca, who knew the civically useful engineer and the astrologer (!), fourteenth-century Humanists show no interest in Archimedes. The Latin Middle Ages forgot even much of that, and when Archimedean mathematics was translated in the 12th and 13th centuries, almost no integration with the traditional image of the person took place. With only Apuleius and Augustine as partial exceptions, Latin Antiquity did not know Archimedes as a mathematician but only as an ingenious engineer and astronomer, serving his city and killed by fatal distraction when in the end it was taken by ruse.
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