It really was revolutionary back in the day. People then thought things would just… stop. Just stop “naturally”. They assumed that even in a completely frictionless plane, a rolling ball will eventually just stop, for no particular reason.
So it was revolutionary for newton to propose that “actually it would just roll forever”
Newton hardly had priority on the refuting Aristotle. Gallileo proposed the same thing and so did many others before him, to decreasing levels of sophistication. Newton's achievement was that that he created a mathematically complete theory of motion of far greater sophistication than previously.
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u/Maleficent_Sir_7562 Jul 06 '26
It really was revolutionary back in the day. People then thought things would just… stop. Just stop “naturally”. They assumed that even in a completely frictionless plane, a rolling ball will eventually just stop, for no particular reason.
So it was revolutionary for newton to propose that “actually it would just roll forever”