• AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Newton’s contributions were defining those principles through mathematics to prove them and quantify them. He didn’t just say “gravity is a thing that exists” and have accolades poured up on him. He also invented calculus to prove his theories, since the math required to solve those problems didn’t exist yet. He actually invented it twice, since he threw all of his notes into the fireplace in a fit of frustration while trying to teach calculus to his assistant.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      But also, before the whole “an object at rest remains at rest unless acted on by an outside force” was different from Aristotle’s view, which said that objects fall because each of the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) had their natural place, and these elements had “a tendency to move back toward their natural place.”

      I mean we still think we have 5 senses, as Aristotle defined, when in reality cognitive science holds it to be more than a dozen.

      Tell someone they definitely have a sixth sense and you’ll get a look like in the meme.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          My point exactly.

          I really can’t name many, but for instance nociception is the sense of pain and proprioception is the sense of where your body is in space.

          A blind and deaf man can direct his hands so that his index fingers meet. And feeling isn’t the same as pain.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense#Human_sensation

          Some examples of human absolute thresholds for the nine to 21 external senses.

          So there a bit of debate about how many senses we have, but it’s definitely more than six.

          • gmtom@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I’ve heard the 5 senses justified in that they are the 5 “external” senses and the rest are about internal sensing like your sense of hunger. It’s still a bit of a reach but much better than the pure classical view.

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              True, but even with the external ones, you still get at least six.

              Sensory systems, or senses, are often divided into external (exteroception) and internal (interoception) sensory systems. Human external senses are based on the sensory organs of the eyes, ears, skin, nose, mouth and the vestibular system.

              From the wiki article

    • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      The big Newtonian conceptual shift was the removal of the idea of “natural motions” (fire wants to go up, earth wants to go down, the stars want to go in circles), which permitted a unified explanation of terrestrial and celestial motion.

      The monkey may be surprised because they had previously thought that motion was intrinsic to matter, instead of contingent.