Monday, July 25, 2022

Fortune Quote #3651

...Newton wrote that Galileo had discovered that the constant force of
gravity produces a motion proportional to the square of the time.... But
Galileo said nothing of the sort. His discussion of falling bodies rarely
alludes to forces, much less to a uniform gravitational force that causes
bodies to fall. By crediting to Galileo the answer to a question that
Galileo's paradigm did not permit to be asked, Newton's account hides the
effect of a small but revolutionary transformation in the questions that
scientists asked about motion as well as in the answers they felt able to
accept. -- Thomas Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"

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