Cohen Bernard I. The Birth of a New Physics

2d rev. —— Penguin, 1992. — 272 p. –— ISBN 978-0140136333, 0140136339.The scientific revolution of the 17th century dethroned the «common-sense» physics of Aristotle and established a powerful «grand design». The story of one of the greatest advances in human thought is told in this work, revised in this edition to take account of the findings of recent years.
These are notions so basic to our view of life that we take them for granted. But in the seventeenth century they were revolutionary, heretical, even dangerous to the men who formed them. Culture, religion, and science had intertwined over the centuries to create a world view based on a stationary earth. Indeed, if the earth moved, would not birds be blown off the trees and would not an object thrown straight up come down far away? Then came the Renaissance and with it Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Huygens, and Newton: giants who courageously remade the world into an earth which actually moves 100,000 feet a second while revolving 1,000 miles an hour around an object 93,000,000 miles away. And yet birds perch unruffled and an apple will fall straight down. All of this we think we know. But how well do we know it? In the twenty-five years since its first publication, The Birth of a New Physics has become a classic in the history of science. Here expanded by more than one-third and fully updated, it not only offers us the best account of the greatest scientific revolution but also tells us how we can know we live in a dynamic universe.Preface.
The physics of a moving Earth.
Where Will It Fall?
Alternative Answers
The Need for a New Physics
The old physics.
Aristotle’s Physics of Common Sense.
The «Natural» Motion of Objects.
The «Incorruptible» Heavens.
The Factors of Motion: Force, Resistance, Speed, Distance, and Time.
Motion of Bodies.
Falling through Air.
The Impossibility of a Moving Earth.
The Earth and the Universe.
Copernicus and the Birth of Modern Science.
The System of Concentric Spheres.
Ptolemy and the System of Epicycles and Deferents.
Copernican Innovations.
Copernicus versus Ptolemy.
Problems with a Copernican Universe.
Exploring the depths of the Universe.
Evolution of the New Physics
Galileo Galilei
The Telescope: A Giant Step
The Landscape of the Moon
Earthshine
Stars Galore
Jupiter as Evidence
A New World
Toward an inertial physics.
Uniform Linear Motion.
A Locomotive's Smokestack and a Moving Ship.
Galileo's Science of Motion.
Galileo's Predecessors.
Formulating the Law of Inertia.
Galilean Difficulties and Achievements: The Law of Inertia.
Kepler’ scelestial music.
The Ellipse and the Keplerian Universe.
The Three Laws.
Applications of the Third, or Harmonic, Law.
Kepler versus the Copernicans.
Keplerian Achievement.
The Grand design — a new physics.
Newtonian Anticipations.
The Principia.
Final Formulation of the Law of Inertia.
«The System of the World».
The Masterstroke: Universal Gravitation.
The Dimensions of the Achievement.
Supplements.
Galileo and the Telescope.
What Galileo «Saw» in the Heavens.
Galileo’s Experiments on Free Fall.
Galileo’s Experimental Foundation of the Science of Motion.
Did Galileo Ever Believe that in Uniformly Accelerated Motion the Speed Is Proportional to the Distance?
The Hypothetico-Deductive Method.
Galileo and the Medieval Science of Motion.
Kepler, Descartes, and Gassendi on Inertia.
Galileo's Discovery of the Parabolic Path.
A Summary of Galileo's Major Discoveries in the Science of Motion.
Newton’s Debt to Hooke: The Analysis of Curvilinear Orbital Motion.
The Inertia of Planets and Comets.
Proof that an Elliptical Planetary Orbit Follows from the Inverse-Square Law.
Newton and the Apple: Newton’s Discovery of the v2/r Law.
Newton on «Gravitational» and «Inertial» Mass.
Newton’s Steps to Universal Gravity.
A guide to further reading.
Index.