"On the authority of Aristotle... motion in the planetary world was somehow directed by the more perfect motion in higher spheres, and so on, up to the outermost sphere of fixed stars, indistinguishable from the prime mover. This implied a refined animistic and pantheistic world view, incomparably more rational than the ancient world views of Babylonians and Egyptians, among others, but a world view, nonetheless, hardly compatible with the idea of "inertial motion" which is implied in Buridan's concept of "impetus"… a momentous breaking point... which was to bear fruit... in the hands, first of Copernicus and then of Newton."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Julio A. Gonzalo, The Intelligible Universe: An Overview of the Last Thirteen Billion Years (2008) 2nd edn.
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…"
"Newton's system was for a long time considered as final and the task... seemed simply to be an expansion.... From the…"