From simple to complex explanation: from classic natural sciences to engineering sciences

Abstract

In the early New Time mathematical principles could be applied to the development of new machines from practical engineers. There was a practical problem of developing a model into full-scale machine. The classic six simple machines are the elementary «building blocks» of which all complicated machines are composed. Heron of Alexandria lists five mechanisms: winch, lever, pulley, wedge, and screw. By Galileo we find one more – inclined plane. But for Galileo inclined plane is also an abstract theoretical object and the universal explanatory model for all machines. Abstract theoretical objects are specially designed in theoretical knowledge as a result of a particular kind of idealization and schematization of experimental, and hence, engineering objects. For example the mathematical pendulum is an idealized model of a gravity pendulum, which can be used to investigate the laws of free fall. Galileo did more than just observe natural phenomena. He would design an ingenious project of the technically feasible experimental situation. Based on this project, a real experiment could be devised and conducted. Galileo not only related a geometrical scheme to physical reality, but also to the constructions of the different complex machines. But it was Euclid geometry. In the next phase of the development of the theory of mechanisms (kinematics of machinery) as an engineering science instead of Euclid geometry was elaborated the descriptive geometry of Gaspard Monge. Theory of mechanisms encloses now the general classification of mechanisms and the description of the structure of different mechanisms with help of the kinematic geometry as consists from kinematic pairs, chains and gears to multiply of structural schemes of the new technical systems.