Common Sense Ain’t Always Right

“Many fail to grasp what they have seen,
and cannot judge what they have learned,
although they tell themselves they know.”
~ Heraclitus

From the Ancient Greeks to the Scientific Revolution

For almost two thousand years, European ideas about how the world works were based on the pronouncements of the ancient Greeks.

Then some folks decided to compare those ideas against how the real world actually works. They found that a lot of the very pretty ideas of the ancient Greeks were just very pretty ideas. The real world was not acting like Aristotle said it should. Or like the Church said it should. Things got messy.

Galileo was sentenced to house arrest, but his experiments and observations survived.

In this chapter, we look at Galileo’s discoveries about gravity. And we’ve got a simple and fun chapter-end activity that lets you test who was right: Aristotle or Galileo.

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Activity Video for Chapter 2

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Here are the links from the text in Chapter 2:

9.  Biography “Aristotle – Wikipedia” 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle

10.  Biography “Galileo | Biography, Discoveries, & Facts | Britannica”
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Galileo-Galilei

11.  Biography “Giordano Bruno | Biography, Death, & Facts ….”
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giordano-Bruno

12.  Deeper Dive “Galileo affair – Wikipedia” 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

13.  Deeper Dive “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems – Wikipedia”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chief_World_Systems

14.  Great Video “Apollo 15 Hammer-Feather Drop – YouTube.” 20 Jul. 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYEgdZ3iEKA

15.  Great Video “Brian Cox visits the world’s biggest vacuum chamber – YouTube” 4 Nov. 2014,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWeNToW9t58.