"I shall try to sum up the main obstacles which arrested the progress of science for such an immeasurable time. The first was the splitting of the world into two spheres, and the mental split which resulted from it. The second was the geocentric dogma, the blind eye turned on the promising line of thought which had started with the Pythagoreans and stopped abruptly with Aristarchus of Samos. The third was the dogma of uniform motion in perfect circles. The fourth was the divorcement of science from mathematics. The fifth was the inability to realize that a body at rest tended to stay at rest, a body in motion tended to stay in motion. The main achievement of the first part of the scientific revolution was the removal of these five cardinal obstacles. This was done chiefly by three men: Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. After that, the road was open to the Newtonian synthesis; from there on the journey led with rapidly gaining speed to the atomic age."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Classical_mechanics
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Classical mechanics
21 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Classical mechanics →
Related Quotes
"Wave functions, probabilities, quantum tunneling, the ceaseless roiling energy fluctuations of the vacuum, the smeari…"
"In Newton's time only two kinds of force were available for quantitative investigation. One was the force of gravity;…"
"However far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be …"
"A law explains a set of observations; a theory explains a set of laws. The quintessential illustration of this jump i…"
"From the thick darkness of the middle ages man's struggling spirit emerged as in new birth; breaking out of the iron …"
"Newton then elevates this approximate empirical discovery to the position of a rigorous principle, the principle of i…"
"... Inertia resists acceleration, but acceleration relative to what? Within the frame of classical mechanics the only…"
"Although many historians of the new millennium now take issue with the notion of a Scientific Revolution, it is gener…"
"I mentally conceive of some moveable [sphere] projected on a horizontal plane, all impediments being put aside. Now i…"
"On the authority of Aristotle... motion in the planetary world was somehow directed by the more perfect motion in hig…"