In 1667, twenty years before Isaac Newton published his mathematization of physics, and more than ten years before the publication of Giovanni Borelli's De motu animalium, the Danish anatomist Nicolaus Steno published an entirely new geometrical theory of muscle motion in the book Elementorum myologiæ specimen. Historians of science have studied this book in recent decades, but the recent rediscovery of a seventeenth-century muscle atlas at the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de Santé in Paris sheds new light on the largely overlooked origin of Steno's mathematical theory of muscles. In this article, we show that Steno's muscle diagrams result from a tension that Steno faced when combining his interest in illustrations with presenting his mathematical insights about the inner structure of muscle fibres. Furthermore, we argue that Steno's diagrams are deeply connected to observations through a new method of dissecting the muscles. The observational origins of Steno's mathematical insight are further confirmed by the strong correlation between Steno's depictions of the structure and function of skeletal muscles and the results of current biomechanical investigations.

1667 年，也就是艾萨克·牛顿发表他的物理学数学化论文的 20 年前，比乔瓦尼·博雷利 (Giovanni Borelli) 的《动物的运动》( De motu animalium ) 发表的十多年前，丹麦解剖学家尼古拉斯·斯蒂诺 (Nicolaus Steno) 在《肌原体标本》一书中发表了一种全新的肌肉运动几何理论。. 近几十年来，科学史家一直在研究这本书，但最近在巴黎圣特大学图书馆重新发现了 17 世纪的肌肉图谱，这为 Steno 的肌肉数学理论在很大程度上被忽视的起源提供了新的线索。在本文中，我们展示了 Steno 的肌肉图源于 Steno 在将他对插图的兴趣与展示他对肌肉纤维内部结构的数学见解相结合时所面临的压力。此外，我们认为 Steno 的图表通过一种新的肌肉解剖方法与观察结果密切相关。Steno 的数学洞察力的观察起源被 Steno 之间的强相关性进一步证实。