Antiquity
The ancient Greek philosophers, Aristotle in particular, were among the first to propose that abstract principles govern nature. Aristotle argued, in On the Heavens, that terrestrial bodies rise or fall to their "natural place" and mistakenly claimed that an object twice as heavy as some other would fall to the ground from the same height, in half the time. Aristotle believed in logic and observation but it would be more than a thousand years before Francis Bacon would first develop the scientific method of experimentation, which he called a vexation of nature.
Aristotle saw a distinction between "natural motion" and "forced motion", and he believed that in a hypothetical vacuum, there would be no reason for a body to move naturally toward one point rather than any other, and so he concluded a body in a vacuum must either stay at rest or else move indefinitely fast. In this way, Aristotle was the first to approach something similar to the law of inertia. However, he believed a vacuum would be impossible because the surrounding air would rush in to fill it immediately. He also believed that an object would stop moving in an unnatural direction once the applied forces were removed. Later Aristotelians developed an elaborate explanation for why an arrow continues to fly through the air after it has left the bow, proposing that an arrow creates a vacuum in its wake, into which air rushes, pushing it from behind. Aristotle's beliefs were influenced by Plato's teachings on the perfection of the circular uniform motions of the heavens. As a result, he conceived of a natural order in which the motions of the heavens were necessarily perfect, in contrast to the terrestrial world of changing elements, where individuals come to be and pass away.
Galileo would later observe "the resistance of the air exhibits itself in two ways: first by offering greater impedance to less dense than to very dense bodies, and secondly by offering greater resistance to a body in rapid motion than to the same body in slow motion".
Read more about this topic: History Of Classical Mechanics
Famous quotes containing the word antiquity:
“We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always. The Indians have left no traces on its surface, but it is the same to the civilized man and the savage. The aspect of the shore only has changed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)