The Entry of History in Naval Science

The writings that most closely belong to the discipline of history, and in particular the history of shipbuilding, are papers containing arguments quite different from each other, or very informative or very specialized. The scientist is often embarrassed in reading these books because they are written from a humanistic, and they are not scientific-technical papers, sometimes they are complemented with mathematical formulas and diagrams written in obsolete languages, designed to discern the paths of history passed, and adjacent to a discipline that looks to the near future and not in the past, a history too often forgotten. The Scientia navalis or Naval Science, which Leonhard Euler (1707 - 1783) was a teacher and somewhat precursor, from time immemorial languishing on the shelves of libraries, neglected by scholars. This occurred because the discipline has come to self-awareness, especially in the contemporary age, when, following the example of the Galilean revolution, the community of surveyors and scholars of mechanics oriented his attention to the problems of shipbuilding and vessel operations, which at first seemed disciplines entrusted only to the skill of the shipwright, carpenters and the Masters and Shipmasters on board ships, as well as to the wisdom of tradition. History, however, is a fascinating and fruitful field of study for some guidance because by understanding what has been achieved in the past, has been able to establish a more consistent definition of science and technology to be used in applied in the design and construction. Even for shipbuilding, in fact, the sedimentation of knowledge of the past passed down orally by the shipwright to their students and then taught in the schools of Naval Engineering in France scrolls and founded by Jean- Baptiste Colbert (1619 - 1683) Secretary of the French Navy in the seventeenth century, has been able to point the way to address and solve static and structural problems, but also those related to material behaviour and then, thanks to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, those relating to navigation and manoeuvring of vessels. Only in this way it was possible to achieve those goals of technical and technological developments that have allowed the massive shipbuilding industry in the nineteenth century, following the same \u201clogic\u201d that guided the ancient builders and shipwrights, thus obtaining accurate and effective design and construction solutions