In the reign of Henry VII. sir Philip Calthrope, a Norfolk knight, sent as much cloth, of fine French tauney, as would make him a gown, to a tailor in Norwich. It happened one John Drakes, a shoemaker, coming into the shop, liked it so well, that he went and bought of the same as much for himself, enjoining the tailor to make it of the same fashion. The knight was informed of this, and therefore commanded the tailor to cut his gown as full of holes as his sheers could make. John Drakes’s was made “of the same fashion,” but he vowed he never would be of the gentleman’s fashion again.
Discoveries
OF THE
ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
No. VII.
In the present stage of the inquiry will be adduced examples of the knowledge of the ancients, respecting the essential principles that “uphold the world.”
Gravity, Attraction—the Law of Squaring the Distances—Centripetal and Centrifugal Force.
The moderns, who imagine that they were the first to discover universal gravitation, have only trod in the paths of the ancients. It is true, that they have demonstrated the laws of gravitation, but this is all.
Besides universal gravitation, the ancients knew that the circular motion described by the planets in their courses, is the result of two moving forces combined—a rectilinear and a perpendicular; which, united together, form a curve. They knew also why these two contrary forces retain the planets in their orbs; and explained themselves, as the moderns do, excepting only the terms of “centripetal” and “centrifugal;” instead of which, however, they used what was altogether equivalent.
They also knew the inequality of the course of the planets, ascribing it to the variety of their weights reciprocally considered, and of their proportional distances; or, which is the same thing, in more modern terms, they knew the “law of the inverse ratio of the square of the distance from the centre of the revolution.”
Some have thought, that in Empedocles’s system the foundation of Newton’s was to be found; imagining, that under the name of “love,” he intended to intimate a law, or power, which separated the parts of matter, in order to join itself to them, and to which nothing was wanting but the name of attraction; and that by the term “discord,” he intended to describe another force, which obliged the same parts to recede from one another, and which Newton calls a repelling force.
The Pythagoreans and Platonics perceived the necessity of admitting the force of two powers, viz. projection and gravity, in order to account for the revolution of the planets. Timæus, speaking of the soul of the world, which animates all nature, says, that “God hath endowed it with two powers, which, in combination, act according to certain numeric proportions.”