The History of Gravity and Aristotle

One of the most pervasive behaviors that we experience, its no wonder that even the earliest scientists tried to understand why objects fall toward the ground. The Greek philosopher Aristotle gave one of the earliest and most comprehensive attempts at a scientific explanation of this behavior by putting forth the idea that objects moved toward their natural place. This natural place for the element of Earth was in the center of the Earth (which was, of course, the center of the universe in Aristotles geocentric model of the universe). Surrounding the Earth was a concentric sphere that was the natural realm of water, surrounded by the natural realm of air, and then the natural realm of fire above that. Thus, Earth sinks in water, water sinks in the air, and flames rise above air. Everything gravitates toward its natural place in Aristotles model, and it comes across as fairly consistent with our intuitive understanding and basic observations about how the world works. Aristotle further believed that objects fall at a speed that is proportional to their weight. In other words, if you took a wooden object and a metal object of the same size and dropped them both, the heavier metal object would fall at a proportionally faster speed. Galileo and Motion Aristotles philosophy about motion toward a substances natural place held sway for about 2,000 years, until the time of Galileo Galilei. Galileo conducted experiments rolling objects of different weights down inclined planes (not dropping them off the Tower of Pisa, despite the popular apocryphal stories to this effect), and found that they fell with the same acceleration rate regardless of their weight. In addition to the empirical evidence, Galileo also constructed a theoretical thought experiment to support this conclusion. Here is how the modern philosopher describes Galileos approach in his 2013 book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking: Some thought experiments are analyzable as rigorous arguments, often of the form reductio ad absurdum, in which one takes ones opponents premises and derives a formal contradiction (an absurd result), showing that they cant all be right. One of my favorites is the proof attributed to Galileo that heavy things dont fall faster than lighter things (when friction is negligible). If they did, he argued, then since heavy stone A would fall faster than light stone B, if we tied B to A, stone B would act as a drag, slowing A down. But A tied to B is heavier than A alone, so the two together should also fall faster than A by itself. We have concluded that tying B to A would make something that fell both faster and slower than A by itself, which is a contradiction. Newton Introduces Gravity The major contribution developed by Sir Isaac Newton was to recognize that this falling motion observed on Earth was the same behavior of motion that the Moon and other objects experience, which holds them in place within relation to each other. (This insight from Newton was built upon the work of Galileo, but also by embracing the heliocentric model and Copernican principle, which had been developed by Nicholas Copernicus prior to Galileos work.) Newtons development of the law of universal gravitation, more often called the law of gravity, brought these two concepts together in the form of a mathematical formula that seemed to apply to determine the force of attraction between any two objects with mass. Together with Newtons laws of motion, it created a formal system of gravity and motion that would guide scientific understanding unchallenged for over two centuries. Einstein Redefines Gravity The next major step in our understanding of gravity comes from Albert Einstein, in the form of his general theory of relativity, which describes the relationship between matter and motion through the basic explanation that objects with mass actually bend the very fabric of space and time (collectively called spacetime). This changes the path of objects in a way that is in accord with our understanding of gravity. Therefore, the current understanding of gravity is that it is a result of objects following the shortest path through spacetime, modified by the warping of nearby massive objects. In the majority of cases that we run into, this is in complete agreement with Newtons classical law of gravity. There are some cases which require the more refined understanding of general relativity to fit the data to the required level of precision. The Search for Quantum Gravity However, there are some cases where not even general relativity can quite give us meaningful results. Specifically, there are cases where general relativity is incompatible with the understanding of quantum physics. One of the best known of these examples is along the boundary of a black hole, where the smooth fabric of spacetime is incompatible with the granularity of energy required by quantum physics. This was theoretically resolved by the physicist Stephen Hawking, in an explanation that predicted black holes radiate energy in the form of Hawking radiation. What is needed, however, is a comprehensive theory of gravity that can fully incorporate quantum physics. Such a theory of quantum gravity would be needed in order to resolve these questions. Physicists have many candidates for such a theory, the most popular of which is string theory, but none which yield sufficient experimental evidence (or even sufficient experimental predictions) to be verified and broadly accepted as a correct description of physical reality. Gravity-Related Mysteries In addition to the need for a quantum theory of gravity, there are two experimentally-driven mysteries related to gravity that still need to be resolved. Scientists have found that for our current understanding of gravity to apply to the universe, there must be an unseen attractive force (called dark matter) that helps hold galaxies together and an unseen repulsive force (called dark energy) that pushes distant galaxies apart at faster rates.

Difference Between Goal Structure And Goal Orientation

Both goal structure and goal orientation influence the way students perceive the purpose of goal setting and achievement. To understand the effect, it is important to distinguish the difference between goal structure and goal orientation when considering students’ motivation, behaviors and the reasons, or purposes, for engaging in academic work. Classroom goal structures refers to the learning environment in which the learning takes place and influences a student’s perception on what it means to achieve. According to Wolters (2004), achievement goal theorists have established two categories of goal structures: †¢ Classroom mastery goal structures: an environment in which the instructional practices, policies, and norms convey to†¦show more content†¦236). There is a direct correlation between goal structures, goal orientations and student achievement. Lau and Nie (2008) examined the interaction between classroom goal structures and personal goal orientations to the prediction of students’ achievement and motivational outcomes (p. 15). The study consisted of 3,943 grade five students from 130 classrooms in 38 elementary schools in Singapore. The participating schools represented a wide spectrum of achievement levels to ensure a â€Å"natural variance† of demographics and classroom characteristics. The mixed-methodology study included qualitative surveys to gather data on students’ motivational beliefs, academic behaviors, and perceived classroom goal structure as well as quantitative data from a math achievement test. Lau et al. analyzed students’ responses to determine their personal goal orientation. 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Kropotkin Free Essays

Russian main proponent of anarchist communism, Kropotkin (1842–1921)  believed that Darwin’s theory of evolution, properly applied, showed that human beings are social creatures who flourish best in small communities cemented together by mutual aid and voluntary associations. A guiding spirit of the international anarchist movement, Kropotkin was also a distinguished geographer, a scientist and a positivist. He was a geographer who carried out explorations of Siberia, Finland, and Manchuria before devoting his life to political activities. We will write a custom essay sample on Kropotkin or any similar topic only for you Order Now Kropotkin was a Russian aristocrat by birth but he renounced his title 1872 and henceforth devoted himself to the cause of social revolution, spending most of his later life in Western Europe and Britain. Memoirs of a Revolutionist is the work in which Kropotkin summarized his ideas. This entertaining and candid autobiography of the great anarchist is highly impressive. There are fantastic characters – the millionaire gourmet prince who ate away a fortune; thrilling adventures – escape from the Peter and Paul prison, Petersburg’s Bastille; amusing ironies on the run, as when he gets a job in London on Nature under an assumed name and is asked to review his own books. Lenin thought Kropotkin a worthy bore. Kropotkin regarded Lenin as an honorable tyrant. The main issue touched upon by the memoirs is the analysis of correlation between Darwinism and â€Å"the progressive evolution† of human society[1]. Memoirs of a Revolutionist helps track the life journey made by Kropotkin before his formulated his ideas. Born into an aristocratic Moscow family close to the Russian Imperial throne, Kropotkin was educated at an exclusive military academy, but at 20, filled with the desire to be useful, he renounced a brilliant career to serve for five years as a military administrator in Eastern Siberia. His hopes for liberal reform by Alexander II, the tsar who had abolished serfdom, were soon disappointed. He also lost any faith in the virtues of state discipline in society and began to move slowly towards an anarchist position. He now turned to scientific exploration of the nature, and his observations laid the foundations of his theory of â€Å"mutual aid†[2] among animal species. Anarchism, as advanced by Peter Kropotkin, was equally prepared to recognize the profound influence of Darwinism on modern thought. Darwin, Kropotkin argued, made biology an advanced science by giving it an evolutionary principle of universal magnitude. Darwin’s theory, in his opinion, provided a key for reconstructing â€Å"the progressive evolution† not only of plants and animals but also of human society as a scientific challenge. Kropotkin did not deny the role of the struggle for existence in the evolutionary process, but he bitterly opposed Darwin’s designation of that struggle as the primary motor of biological transformation. Kropotkin gave credit to The Descent of Man, one of Darwin’s major works, for demonstrating the biological origins of morality, the foundation of â€Å"mutual aid†. Kropotkin’s ideas have clear positivist coat. He saw the development of anarchism as one aspect of the whole movement of modern science towards an integrated philosophy. He believed that the dominant phenomenon in nature was harmony, arrived at by a continuous process of adjustment between contending forces. In human, as in animal societies, the dominant phenomenon was mutual aid: thus once metaphysics, law and state authority had been shaken off, harmony could be realized. Developing his idea of â€Å"mutual aid† Kropotkin comes to a fair, as he believes, society, that is anarchist communism. It is a society without government, where harmony would be obtained not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements between the various groups, territorial and professional, instituted for the sake of production and consumption as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized society. In such a society, as in organic life, Kropotkin believed harmony would result from â€Å"an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between a multitude of forces and influences†[3]. The individual would not be limited in the free expression of his powers in production by a capitalist monopoly, or by obedience, which only led to the sapping of initiative. On the contrary, he would be able to obtain the complete development of all his faculties: the fullest individuation. Works Cited Kropotkin, P.   Memoirs of a Revolutionist. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962 Shatz, Marshall S. Essential Works of Anarchism. New York: Quadrangle Books, 1972 [1] P. Kropotkin,   Memoirs of a Revolutionist. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 498. [2] P. Kropotkin,   Memoirs of a Revolutionist. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 499. [3] Marshall S. Shatz, Essential Works of Anarchism. (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1972), 269.    How to cite Kropotkin, Essay examples