9781422277560

Chapter Early Life 1 In ancient Greece some 3,000 years ago, men began asking questions about the fundamental nature of the world, and all the activities within it. In this way they began the study of physics. The problem of physics was to find a simple explanation for the way nature worked. Thus they observed water, and noticed that when it was heated, it always changed into vapor. They observed the regular sequence of night and day, and of the seasons. They recognized that as the world changes, it changes in a regular way, and they tried to develop scientific laws that explained how nature works. For more than 2,000 years, the scientific theories of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers were considered by Western scholars to provide an accurate understanding of how the world truly works. But in the sixteenth century, some European scientists began to question these ancient teachings. Their answers did not always please an all-powerful Christian Church, one of the dominant institutions of European life at this time. For daring to suggest that the earth rotates, Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was burned at the stake. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) made a similar assertion, and was imprisoned and forced to confess his error. Nevertheless, the earth does rotate. The Church could hinder scientific progress, but could not stop it. The seventeenth century saw the development of scientific instruments, such as the telescope, which enabled men to make more detailed observations and discover new facts. There were also major advances in the European knowledge of mathematics, which allowed simple relations between the new facts to be stated clearly in mathematical formulas. The greatest figure of the period was English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Newton established laws that explained

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