The Three Centuries of Newtonian Mechanics: Universal Time and Absolute Space

Abstract

“Time numbers motion in reference to before and after” is an often quoted sentence of Aristotle. For him motion meant what we call change; to him, our motion was ‘local motion’. So Aristotle’s aphorism referred to both the reversible aspect of time as manifested in spatial motion and as applied in the technologies of chronometry, and to the irreversible aspects of time which Aristotle discussed under the wording of ‘generation’ and ‘corruption’. The physicist is concerned with both aspects, as already mentioned in the Introduction — and as will be more evident in later chapters.