Re: Debate: Was Aristotle Correct: Re: A Falling Force

On Sat, 26 May 2007 20:38:35 UTC, Douglas Eagleson
<eaglesondouglas@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Here is a quote from a modern English text of The Heavens by
Aristotle:

pg443 of McKeon's edition

"For there will be a force which moves it, and the small and lighter
body is the further will a given force move it."

...

Galileo may have had a poor translation.

This makes it sound as if Galileo found out about Aristotle and figured
out what that worthy had been talking about, all on his own, and got it
wrong. Actually, like every other person educated in math and astronomy in
his time, he studied Aristotle at university (in Latin translation,
presumably) and studied all the commentators, including, of course, the
highly respected Roman authority, Simplicius. To talk of a misreading by
Galileo is to misunderstand the situation completely.

And mistook the size as a
problem. Making his trip to the tower of pizza a lark.

There used to be a place around here called The Leaning Tower of Pizza,
and there may still be; but the name was a joke.

Anyway, it is by no means certain that he actually made that experiment in
Pisa, and he certainly didn't need to, with plenty of evidence from both
sensate experience [experiments] and necessary demonstrations
[mathematical proofs], to use the terms he liked. Whoever may have been
misreading Aristotle, the philosophers of the early 17th century,
followers of Aristotle to a man, considered it established -- by Aristotle
-- that bodies fell with a speed proportional to their weight. This is
abundantly clear from the documents of the time, including arguments with
Galileo.


Or he had a
different reference. I am still looking for the other possible forces
as the work.

Who knows of the translation used by Galileo? I need to know. If he
use the pg 443 prose, he would have worried about variable forces
between bodies, not constant forces. IMplying a very poor translation
or bad reading. Maybe he read Greek? Did he?

I don't think he read Greek. You might want to check the works of
Simplicius and others to see what they got from the Greek. But it's not a
matter of one errant translation; the pundits all studied Aristotle and
were largely in agreement on these matters.


--
Dan Drake
dd@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.dandrake.com/
porlockjr.blogspot.com
.

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