The Universalization of Directions of Motion:Changes from Aristotelism to the Kinematics of Galileo and Descartes
Quantity and direction are two basic factors to measure motion.The most of current researches of history of science focus on quantity of motion only and ignore the history of change in direction of motion.The establishing of early modern kinematics accompanies the generalization of direction of movement,with the greatest contributions between Galileo and Descartes.If we employ the horizontal direction and vertical direction of motion as the clues,some conclusions will be drawn.The direction of motion was special in Aristotelian physics,and the vertical direction corresponded to the natural movement of simple matter under the moon,and the horizontal one was out of attention.Galileo began the mathematicization of kinematics,but the hori-zontal and vertical directions were still special in his kinematics,which bound to uniform linear motion and uniform acceleration falling motion,respective-ly.Descartes'abstract kinematics truly universalized the direction of motion,and he also used abstract kinematics to explain the vertical and horizontal directions of real motion.So far,the generalization of the direction of motion is completed.
directions of motionkinematicsAristotlelismGalileoDescartes
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