The Birth of a New Physics (Revised and Updated)

by Cohen, I. Bernard

• ISBN13: 9780393300451
• ISBN10: 0393300455
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-08-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
The Physics of a Moving Earth	3	(8)
Where Will it Fall?
Alternative Answers
The Need for a New Physics
The Old Physics	11	(13)
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	24	(29)
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	53	(28)
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	81	(46)
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's Celestial Music	127	(21)
The Ellipse and the Keplerian Universe
The Three Laws
Applications of the Third, or Harmonic, Law
Kepler versus the Copernicans
The Keplerian Achievement
The Grand Design---A New Physics	148	(37)
Newtonian Anticipations
The Principia
Final Formulation of the Law of Inertia
``The System of the World''
The Masterstroke: Universal Gravitation
The Dimensions of the Achivement
Supplements	185	(55)
Galileo and the Telescope	185	(3)
What Galileo ``Saw'' in the Heavens	188	(6)
Galileo's Experiments on Free Fall	194	(2)
Galileo's Experimental Foundation of the Science of Motion	196	(9)
Did Galileo Ever Believe that in Uniformly Accelerated Motion the Speed Is Proportional to the Distance?	205	(2)
The Hypothetico-Deductive Method	207	(1)
Galileo and the Medieval Science of Motion	208	(2)
Kepler, Descartes, and Gassendi on Inertia	210	(2)
Galileo's Discovery of the Parabolic Path	212	(2)
A Summary of Galileo's Major Discoveries in the Science of Motion	214	(4)
Newton's Debt to Hooke: The Analysis of Curvilinear Orbital Motion	218	(4)
The Inertia of Planets and Comets	222	(2)
Proof that an Elliptical Planetary Orbit Follows from the Inverse-Square Law	224	(3)
Newton and the Apple: Newton's Discovery of the v2/r Law	227	(2)
Newton on ``Gravitational'' and ``Inertial'' Mass	229	(5)
Newton's Steps to Universal Gravity	234	(6)
A Guide to Further Reading	240	(7)
Index	247