4
R. N. Mohapatra
weight in empty space, was given by the Greek Mathematician and physicist
by the same name. It endures until today and is in all undergraduate text
books. Euclid, considered the founder of geometry, and Pythagoras, known
for his famous theorem for triangles, gave mathematical results which have
survived the test of time. About 300 BC, Greek philosopher Aristarchus tried
to understand the lunar eclipses and concluded that it is caused by the shadow
cast by Earth on the moon as the Earth goes around the Sun. That is a stunning
realization, considering the prevailing wisdom at the time that the Sun went
around the Earth rather than the other way. This may have been the first
known heliocentric model of the solar system.
The concept of four basic elements, fire, water, Earth, and air put forth
by Empedocles during those ancient times (and to which Aristotle added
the aether as the fifth one) did not however survive the test of time. We
now know that they are not the fundamental objects of which matter is
built but derived from other more basic constituents. Nonetheless, they
represented deep insightful thinking that prevailed before Christ. Similar were
the thinkings in ancient Hindu philosophy circa 1000 BC about the nature of
the cosmos.
Even though bits and pieces of new ideas were trickling down over the
ages, well organized physics that we practice today seems to have originated
around the seventeenth century. Pioneers like Copernicus, Galileo, Tyco
Brahe, Kepler, and others, derived knowledge and wisdom from direct observations of stars and planets in the sky. Telescopes that helped in some of these
were invented by German–Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey in 1608.
Isaac Newton was one of the earliest pioneers. He wrote down a definitive
law that told us in more concrete terms why an apple falls to the ground and
does not go upward to the sky, and also, at what speed it falls. His equation
enunciated in “Principia Mathematica,” published on 5th July, 1687, could
explain the Keplerian laws of Planetary motion, discovered several decades
before Newton published his laws. It provided a unified way of understanding
two diverse and apparently unrelated phenomena—an apple falling from the
tree and the planet going around the Sun in the sky. His proof of Kepler’s laws
of planetary motion pretty much dispelled the last remaining doubts about
the heliocentric view of the planetary motion. Earth was no more the center
of the universe; the geocentric view of Ptolemy from second century AD was
past its time and no more part of science, superseded by the heliocentric view
of Nicolaus Copernicus.
Newton in England, and Gottfried Leibniz in Germany, also independently
invented the new form of mathematics, called calculus, around the same time.
This became a primary mathematical tool in the discussion of physical laws at
R. N. Mohapatra
weight in empty space, was given by the Greek Mathematician and physicist
by the same name. It endures until today and is in all undergraduate text
books. Euclid, considered the founder of geometry, and Pythagoras, known
for his famous theorem for triangles, gave mathematical results which have
survived the test of time. About 300 BC, Greek philosopher Aristarchus tried
to understand the lunar eclipses and concluded that it is caused by the shadow
cast by Earth on the moon as the Earth goes around the Sun. That is a stunning
realization, considering the prevailing wisdom at the time that the Sun went
around the Earth rather than the other way. This may have been the first
known heliocentric model of the solar system.
The concept of four basic elements, fire, water, Earth, and air put forth
by Empedocles during those ancient times (and to which Aristotle added
the aether as the fifth one) did not however survive the test of time. We
now know that they are not the fundamental objects of which matter is
built but derived from other more basic constituents. Nonetheless, they
represented deep insightful thinking that prevailed before Christ. Similar were
the thinkings in ancient Hindu philosophy circa 1000 BC about the nature of
the cosmos.
Even though bits and pieces of new ideas were trickling down over the
ages, well organized physics that we practice today seems to have originated
around the seventeenth century. Pioneers like Copernicus, Galileo, Tyco
Brahe, Kepler, and others, derived knowledge and wisdom from direct observations of stars and planets in the sky. Telescopes that helped in some of these
were invented by German–Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey in 1608.
Isaac Newton was one of the earliest pioneers. He wrote down a definitive
law that told us in more concrete terms why an apple falls to the ground and
does not go upward to the sky, and also, at what speed it falls. His equation
enunciated in “Principia Mathematica,” published on 5th July, 1687, could
explain the Keplerian laws of Planetary motion, discovered several decades
before Newton published his laws. It provided a unified way of understanding
two diverse and apparently unrelated phenomena—an apple falling from the
tree and the planet going around the Sun in the sky. His proof of Kepler’s laws
of planetary motion pretty much dispelled the last remaining doubts about
the heliocentric view of the planetary motion. Earth was no more the center
of the universe; the geocentric view of Ptolemy from second century AD was
past its time and no more part of science, superseded by the heliocentric view
of Nicolaus Copernicus.
Newton in England, and Gottfried Leibniz in Germany, also independently
invented the new form of mathematics, called calculus, around the same time.
This became a primary mathematical tool in the discussion of physical laws at