Giovanni Alfonso Borelli's De Motu Animalium, published posthumously in 1680, analysed animal movement through mechanics. He argued that human muscles were inadequate for bird-like flapping flight. This pushed later experimenters towards gliding, fixed wings, and artificial power rather than heroic imitation of birds.

Borelli changed the imaginative vocabulary of flight by challenging Icarian dreams of simply strapping on wings. Poets and essayists inherited a sharper contrast between bodily limitation and mechanical invention, a contrast central to modern writing about technology.