Abstract
In the 1590s, while teaching at the University of Pisa, Galileo Galilei tried to solve a puzzle. It involved an apparent contradiction between what he was convinced was true about the world, but which our experience of the world implied was not true. The consensus among almost everyone, scientists and others, was that the Earth was not only the center of the universe, and that it remain fixed and unmovable in this place, but that our experience of everything going around us – Sun, Moon, stars, all things up in the sky – was proof that it could not be otherwise. It is impossible for the Earth to move, for if it did, we would experience that motion in various ways. At the very least, clouds and birds could not catch-up with a moving Earth. Or, a weight dropped from a tower would not fall vertically to the bottom, but would fall “behind” the tower. Of course, these things do not happen: therefore, not only is there nothing in our experience of the world that contradicts a stationary Earth, but everything we see and experience actually supports an immovable Earth. So why was Galileo puzzled? Because he was one of the few thinkers at this time who was increasing convinced, obstinately, that the Earth does move.
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Notes
- 1.
(1473–1543).
- 2.
Helios is Greek for Sun. A Greek astronomer, Aristarchus, possibly put forward this idea seriously in the Third Century BCE, but it went nowhere.
- 3.
Galileo [71] [1632], p. 188.
- 4.
The German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, introduced the term inertia from Latin, for inert. Kepler was thinking about the need to push a weight that is at rest in order to get it moving, since the weight resists this motion or pushes back against the force making it move. That is, the weight has a tendency to remain inert, or at rest.
- 5.
Galileo [70] [1613], p. 125.
- 6.
- 7.
This is the most recent translation of the passage (from the third edition of the Principia); see Newton [151] [1726], p. 416. The last phrase in the first (1687) and second (1713) editions is (footnote to p. 416), “…insofar as is compelled to change that state by forces impressed.”
- 8.
We will later come across an attempt at an answer when we discuss something called Mach’s principle, a concept about which Einstein obsessed for an extended period of his life.
- 9.
The term was not unique to him, although relativity theory put it into common usage. He could have come across it in Mach [134] [1883], pp. 292–293, which Einstein read, as will be seen. Mach probably found the term in the work of German physicist, Ludwig Lange, who is often given credit for coining it. See also Fölsing [65], p. 760, note 14.
References
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Fölsing, Albrecht. 1997. Albert Einstein: a biography (trans: Ewald Osers.). New York: Viking. Originally published in German in 1993.
Galilei, Galileo. 1957. “Letters on Sunspots,” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, pp. 87–144. Edited and translated by Stillman Drake. New York: Doubleday. The letters were published in 1613.
Galilei, Galileo. 1967. Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems (trans Stillman Drake.). Berkeley: University of California Press. The Dialogue was published in 1632.
Mach, Ernst. 1960. The science of mechanics: a critical and historical account of its development. Sixth Edition. (trans: Thomas J. McCormack.). New York: Open Court. The original German edition, Die Mechanik in Inrer Entwicklung, Historisch-Kritisch Dargestellet, was published in 1883. The German edition went through nine revisions.
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Topper, D.R. (2013). Galileo Discovers Inertia & the Relativity of Motion. In: How Einstein Created Relativity out of Physics and Astronomy. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 394. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4782-5_1
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