Mathematics, Motion, and Truth: The Earth goes round the Sun
Speaker(s):
Jeremy Gray
Date/Time: 02/11/2009, 5:30pm
Venue: Barnard's Inn Hall
The reality of the Earth's motion, as proclaimed by Copernicus, quickly proved contentious. Accepted by Kepler, disputed by theologians (Lutheran and Catholic alike), veiled in suggestions of mere convenience, adopted and explained by Newton as a consequence of universal gravitation, parent of the notion of force - What is involved in accepting as true that the Earth goes round the Sun? This lecture traces these debates from the early 1600s to the time of Poincaré.
To view the lecture notes in Acrobat format please click here.
This lecture was jointly held with the British Society for the History of
Mathematics.
For the other BHSM lectures, follows these links:
Triangular
Relationships, by Dr Patricia Fara
Mathematics
and the Medici, by Jim Bennett
Planes and
Pacifism, by Dr June Barrow-Green
From World
Brain to the World Wide Web, by Professor Martin Campbell-Kelly
History
from Below, by Dr Stephen Johnston
The
Celestial Geometry of John Flamsteed, by Dr Allan Chapman
Mathematics
in the Metropolis, by Adrian Rice
Lecture notes
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