Some Intellectual Breakthroughs for the Discovery of Dynamics
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION
Some Intellectual Breakthroughs for the Discovery of Dynamics Amitabha Ghosh1,2,3
Received: 16 July 2020 / Accepted: 7 August 2020 The Institution of Engineers (India) 2020
Abstract The science of motion, i.e. dynamics, forms the foundation for most branches of physical and engineering sciences. It is not only the first branch of Natural Philosophy that attracted the attention of giant intellectuals of the past but also took more than two millennia to reach its final form. This article is a brief exposition to the beautiful thought process and intuition supported by back-breaking research by these philosophers and scientists. It is not a history of mechanics. Keywords Dynamics History Conceptual breakthroughs
Introduction There exist a large number of books and articles depicting the fascinating story of the conceptual journey lasting for more than two millennia. A substantial number of intellectual giants took part in this great journey finally unravelling the mystery behind the ‘science of motion’ or in common language ‘dynamics’. The author of this essay also published a book [1] and an article [2] related to this topic in the recent times. An interested reader can also consult the book [3]. It goes without denying that the subject ‘dynamics’ (or the basic science of motion) forms the most important & Amitabha Ghosh [email protected] 1
Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, India
2
The National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, India
3
Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Howrah, India
foundation for most branches of physical and engineering sciences. Thus, it becomes essential for all students be exposed to the fundamentals of this subject, and this is accomplished in the school level itself. However, the usual approach is to introduce the students to the three laws of motion (usually, and imprecisely, called as ‘Newton’s laws of motion’), and in most cases, it remains hidden to all the real intellectual challenges our greatest scientists and philosophers had to overcome to arrive at these three simple laws which are expected to be grasped by even young school students. Mathematics involved in these laws are very simple, but rarely one ever ponders over the matter to understand why it took more than two thousand years to arrive at these laws by the giant intellectuals in human history! This brief article is an attempt to present and discuss the way the conceptual hurdles were overcome by them. One will be very wrong to even think that the scientists of the past were not intelligent enough to discover these simple rules. The author easily demonstrated it during his teaching career at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur by challenging the students of the class to just think about the methodology with which Kepler discovered that the planets move in elliptic orbits. This was to be done keeping in mind that in astronomical observation only the direction in which a celestial object lies can be determined, nothing else. Semester after semest
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