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Chapter 4 - INERTIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

Steven C. Frautschi ,
Richard P. Olenick ,
Tom M. Apostol  and
David L. Goodstein
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Summary

It has been observed that missiles, that is to say, projectiles follow some kind of curved path, but that it is a parabola no one has shown. I will show that it is, together with other things, neither few in number nor less worth knowing, and what I hold to be even more important, they open the door to a vast and crucial science of which these our researches will constitute the elements; other geniuses more acute than mine will penetrate its hidden recesses.

Galileo Galilei, Two New Sciences, Third Day (1638)

IF THE EARTH MOVES: ARISTOTELIAN OBJECTIONS

In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus's book De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) appeared in print. Copernicus, mindful of his personal safety, had waited until his deathbed to publish his ideas. Within the pages of De Revolutionibus Copernicus set the earth spinning on its axis and revolving around the sun. In his attempt to return the heavens to their simple beauty, Copernicus had to make the sun, not the earth, the center of the universe, and in doing so he tore the heart out of the Aristotelian world. Without the solid, immovable earth at the center of the universe, there could be no Aristotelian laws of motion. And without these laws, there were none at all, for Copernicus had no laws to replace those he destroyed.

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The Mechanical Universe
Mechanics and Heat, Advanced Edition
 , pp. 57 - 74
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1986

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