The debate on the origin of springs in Italy in the age of the Scientific Revolution

In the second half of the 17th century, Perrault's and Mariotte's works, followed by Halley's measures of evaporation, paved the way to the comprehenison of the hydrological cycle as it is currently understood. In Italy the debate was lively and involved a number of scholars, who actively or only cursorily dealt with the theme. They were pure or applied mathematicians, natural scientists, Jesuit scholars and physicians, technicians and connoisseurs of the matter. In this work we reanalyse this complex and multifaceted debate, which, over the course of the century from 1642 to 1741, slowly came to the acceptance of the new paradigm, in the light of the following interpretative keys: (i) the relationship with the coeval international literature, (ii) the legacy of Galilean and Newtonian mechanics, (iii) the attitude towards measurement and experimental practice, (iv) the persistencies of the Aristotelian epistemology and perception of Nature.