| Abstract: | More than twenty years before Huygens and Newton developed formulas for centrifugal acceleration, Mersenne contrived a statisfactory solution for Galileo's problem of the extrusion of bodies from the earth as a result of its daily rotation. Mersenne was able to overcome an error in Galileo's approach without the use either of an explicit notion of infinitesimals or of any clear concept of force. His solution depends on comparing the lengths of two lines, a technique that several historians have claimed to be inadequate for this problem. |
