The false truth

There are many things in life that we assume to be a self-evident truth. For close to two thousand years, the world believed that heavy objects fall faster in comparison to lighter ones. This was in direct proportion to their weight. This misconception was corrected by Galileo Galilei, who lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth century in Italy. He is referred to as the father of modern science for his many contributions to subjects as diverse as physics, mathematics, philosophy and astrology. As Geoffrey West writes regarding Galileo in Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation and Sustainability in Organisms, Economies, Cities and Companies: "He is perhaps best known for his mythical experiments dropping objects of different sizes and compositions from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show that they all reached the ground at the same time. This intuitive observation contradicted the accepted Aristotelian dogma that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones in direct proportion to their weight, a fundamental misconception that was universally believed for almost two thousand years before Galileo actually tested it. It is amazing in retrospect that until Galileo's investigations no one seems to have thought of, let alone bothered, te

This article was originally published on November 10, 2017.