Le glorie degli incogniti, o vero gli huomini illustri dell' accademia
de' signori incogniti di Venetia. Venice, 1647, 4to.
This work is somewhat like a part of my own: it is a budget of Venetian
nobodies who wished to be somebodies; but paradox is not the only means
employed. It is of a serio-comic character, gives genuine portraits in
copperplate, and grave lists of works; but satirical accounts. The
astrologer Andrew Argoli[185] is there, and his son; both of whom, with
some of the others, have place in modern works {105} on biography. Argoli's
discovery that logarithms facilitate easy processes, but increase the labor
of difficult ones, is worth recording.
Controversiae de vera circuli mensura ... inter ... C. S. Longomontanum
et Jo. Pellium.[186] Amsterdam, 1647, 4to.
Longomontanus,[187] a Danish astronomer of merit, squared the circle in
1644: he found out that the diameter 43 gives the square root of 18252 for
the circumference; which gives 3.14185... for the ratio. Pell answered him,
and being a kind of circulating medium, managed to engage in the
controversy names known and unknown, as Roberval, Hobbes, Carcavi, Lord
Charles Cavendish, Pallieur, Mersenne, Tassius, Baron Wolzogen, Descartes,
Cavalieri and Golius.[188] Among them, of course, Longomontanus was made
{106} mincemeat: but he is said to have insisted on the discovery of his
epitaph.[189]
{107}