Re: [Phys-l] nifty pendulum, conservation, et cetera

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

Ha, and I thought I had the book -- is From Falling Bodies to Radio 
Waves worth reading?  It's by a famous Italian.

bc, gift from Ms. Erzberger.

John Denker wrote:

> Larry Woolf recommended:
>  
>
> > Stillman Drake
> >    
>
> Yeah.
>
>
> My earlier remark that Galileo never wrote an equation in his life
> is a quote from Stillman Drake ... I didn't mean to plagiarize the
> guy;  I meant to give him credit for that and a lot more -- see
> below -- but somehow I slipped.  Sorry.
>
> He died about 10 years ago, but before that he was the prince of
> Galileo biographers and translators.
>
> I'm no expert, but I prefer his translations to the others I've
> seen.
>
> Translating such material must be a very difficult job.  You have
> to translate it into modern language, but modern vocabulary words
> like "force" and "momentum" and "energy" carry with them modern
> concepts that simply did not exist in Galileo's day.  There must
> be a tremendous moral hazard, a tremendous temptation to put words
> into Galileo's mouth according to what he "should have" said, as
> opposed to what he really said.
>
> Stillman Drake did a good job with this, IMHO, AFAICT.
>
>
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