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Blog about time and space. In a nutshell it is called Physics. July 24, 2025

“Physics” spans and stretches time, space and ideas. The Philosophy of the ancient Greeks and others have recent data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) or European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and its latest tecnology.

Ancient Greek thinkers as Philosopher Heraclitus wrote “No man ever steps in the same river twice” expressing the motion that the Heavens and Earth is surrounded by change and we can stand by and see and experience cause and effect of motion, force in our daily lives with regard only to Nature. Aristotles another Greek thinker’s, analysis of motion gave us insights, his law of motion, but his law of falling “bodies” showed weakness in Greek thinking when it did not use empirical results to understand Nature. He asserted incorrectly that heavier “bodies” fall faster. Only after experimentation do we gather all material “bodies” fall at the same acceleration in a given experimentation field. At the same time Greek thought shared important ideas such as atomic theory supported by Democritus of Abedera, who stated simply “Nothing exsists except atoms and empty space, everything else is opinion.

Roman and Greek contributions to Physics are part of Western culture. The Roman Philosopher and poet Lucretius had great influence by his explanation of Greek Science to its citizens. His poem “On the Nature of Things” is famed for his presentation of Greek ideas such as atomic theory. This poem influenced Issac Newton understanding of falling “bodies”. The Scottish mathematical biologist D’Arcy Thompson, author of the classic work “ON Growth and Form (1917) expressed the physical constraints on living things and saw Lucretius examination included something for every generation of scientists.

Middle Eastern culture, early 9th Century ce, took the lead in it’s studies and transmittal of physical ideas. Scholars in Baghdad translated the works of Aristotle and 0ther Greeks into Arabic. The Arab astronomer and mathematician Ibn al-Haytham,(also known as Alhazen) made headway in optics. He showed that Ptolemy’s analysis of refraction was wrong and rejected his idea that vision comes as light rays leave the human eye, instead he favors the correct idea that vision arises as light rays enter the eye.

Other Thinkers as Nicolaus Copernicus centered the Sun as the model of the Universe. Previously, Earth was noted as as its Center. His work “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” explains the breakthrough where Copernicus observed the planets in their correct order of distance from the Sun. He held on to Plato’s belief, celestial orbits must be perfect circles. It made it impossible to explain the observed planetary movement to orbits had no physical basis. Enters German astronomer, Johannes Kepler, who found you could not reproduce the circular or oval orbit, the behavior of Mars, but elliptical orbit could. Kepler expressed his study results in 3 laws os planetry motion. 1. Elliptical with the Sun offset from the Centre to focus on the ellipse, 2, The imaginary line joining a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times. 3. The orbital peroid for each planet increases it’s distance from the Sun specific to relation. His example cites “5.2 times further from the Sun than Earth, Jupiter takes 11.9 years to complete orbit.

Bl:og July 24, 2025

Credits for this Blog: Physics A Very Short Introduction by Sidney Perkowitz-The New York Public Library-Morningside Branch

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