And Aristotle was worshipped to the point where if people knew from personal experience that something he said was wrong, they’d assume their own experience was what was mistaken. And this despite him not having any connection to their religion at all.
One example is that they used to think that objects could only have one force acting on it at a time. This could be the “natural force”, which is what makes objects fall when you drop them, or forces resulting from an action being performed on it. As a result, projectiles would travel straight in the direction they were thrown until the natural force took over, at which point they would fall vertically. Somehow this was still popularly believed (by academics at least) well after the catapult had been invented and used in sieges for centuries. It was believed by people who could throw things and observe how they moved with their own eyes.
veroxii@aussie.zone 2 years ago
“It’s all written down in this here book.”