Re: More musings on the second law

Greg Billock (billgr@cco.caltech.edu)
Fri, 30 Jan 1998 09:38:01 -0800 (PST)

Brian,

> If I were to bend over backwards to give the A's (I'm tired
> of typing Aristotelean) the benefit of the doubt then I
> would emphasize that A physics was successful in some ways,
> for example if weights are dropped through liquids instead
> of air then A physics does a reasonable job. So we might
> say that air represented an anomaly that would someday :)
> be explained.

I wonder if anyone has examined how close A physics is to
'intuitive' physics--or the sort I mentioned that could be
measured using reaction tests and the like.

> But I think the main reason is what you allude to above.
> The A's thought that nature could be understood through
> logic and reason alone (guided by the "scriptures",
> Aristotle's writings) without relying on vulgar experience.

Yeah. It seems like the big A himself, though, was more
experimental in attitude, wasn't he? (When it came to
botany, at least, if I remember correctly.)

[a good story]

> would not have gone after Galileo anyway. The commonly
> held view that the secular academics were innocent bystanders
> in the whole affair is, however, definitely a myth.

You mean 'secular' as in 'not paid by the church,' of course,
as "secular culture" was only faintly non-oxymoronic at that
point, right? But agreed--I haven't read a biography of
G, but enough to have seen that he wasn't adverse to his
reputation as the irritating upstart. :-)

-Greg