Submitted 16 hours ago by LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone/posts/iM/If/iMIfvKNChzsmbe3.jpg
SHOCK HORROR
These are the same people that believed in spontaneous generation - that life just popped into existence from nonliving matter, such as dirt, grain, or dirty clothing. It wasn’t considered fully disproven until the 19th century.
As uneducated as many people are now, they’re practically savants compared to your average person just 200 years ago.
Just read the opening parts of the bible and you begin to understand how backwards peoples knowledge was in the past.
Read the novel [or watch the movie] ‘The Name of the Rose’ by Umberto Eco.
One of the themes of the story is showing the shift from educated Europeans getting their knowledge from ancient books to them doing science and investigating the world.
Does the big bang also count as spontaneous generation?
I don’t know, I have visited the US.
Actually, they just patched in more complex systems once we started getting wise.
I’m looking at a copy of Newton’s principia and it’s pretty obvious from the first chapter that y’all are fucking idiots. (Except OP, OP is cool).
Try reading it sometime. Imagine leveling this kind of critique at any other book you’ve never read.
I almost feel like this when hearing about “war”
“Have some sort of strategy”
“If at all possible have a larger army than the enemy”
“If step two is not possible, see step one”
This is basically the whole book.
There is one point in it I found actually useful even today in everyday life. It was something like: When you have surrounded or entrapped your enemy always leave them a way out for retreat so they won’t fight as hard as if their only other option is defeat/death.
A good lesson for people that seek to assert absolute authoritarianism over folks. Corner folks too hard and given no viable alternative, desperation drives unexpected outcomes.
Woah, that hits hard. I guess I’ll have to read the book now…
That’s because it was written at a time when nobles were considered the only natural choice of leadership class, so you’ve got military forces being lead by people with zero practical military knowledge. It’s literally meant to be babies first strategy and logistics guide.
I think this is the most important factor, but at the same time anyone responsible for complex tasks should be well familiar with the value of a simple list of the task’s fundamentals.
Maybe it was more a manual a general could hand to the rich dumbass in charge who was about to bet everyone killed and say “please review the wisdom of the great sage before making your battle plan.”
TBF it’s technically a Daoist philosophical treatise, rather than a how-to on war. To really understand it you have to look at it from that perspective.
if combat is required it is best to be victorious
I mean living on Earth where things fall for seemingly no reason at all, that’s pretty damn revolutionary
There is a subtle genius in establishing the concept of “net force” as something that can be treated mathematically, and that fully predicts an object’s motion. He framed the problem
That’s a pretty gross oversimplification of inertia. The more mass an object has, the more energy that’s required to accelerate it.
The genius lies in the understanding that a heavy object, once moving, will prefer to continue moving than come to a rest. This is why an 18-wheeler needs more distance to stop than a small car. Some people’s intuition tells them that a heavy object will come to a rest quickly.
holds up stone
let’s go of stone
stone starts moving to the floor
Explain this, Isaac!
Witch!
The World is suffering a Dunner - Kruger epedemy.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
This wasn’t the revolutionary part about Newton’s conception of inertia. It was the counterpart: that an object in motion will tend to keep going unless acted upon. This was pretty staggering in a world where an arrow fired from a bow (below escape velocity, you snitty little pedants) will slow down and fall to the ground.
ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 15 hours ago
The prevailing theory in Europe at time was still Aristotle’s idea that a force was necessary for objects to remain in motion. The theories on how an arrow or any other thrown object remained in motion involved an impromptu Rube Goldberg contraption involving the object and the atmosphere.
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 10 hours ago
Pretty much every science fiction film too. With very few notable exceptions.
Saapas@piefed.zip 11 hours ago
Cannon or musket ball would be more fitting for the time imo
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I was trying to call back to Aristotle’s discussion of how this system supposedly worked.