6/21/10

So beautiful!

My readers - men of leisure - hear Adam Smith talk too, about the profundiity's of our earthly habitation!

Of all the phaenomena of nature, the celestial appearances are, the most universal objects of the curiosity of mankind...The Earth had always presented itself to the senses, not only as at rest, but as inert, ponderous, and even averse to motion. ... [For opponents of Coperniocus] to enforce their objection, the adversaries of this hypothesis were at pains to calculate: the circumference of the Earth had been computed to be above twenty–three thousand miles: if the Earth, therefore, was supposed to revolve every day round its axis, every point of it near the equator would pass over above twenty–three thousand miles in a day; and consequently, near a thousand miles in an hour, and about sixteen miles in a minute; a motion more rapid than that of a cannon ball, or even than the swifter progress of sound. The rapidity of its periodical revolution was yet more violent than that of its diurnal rotation. How, therefore, could the imagination ever conceive so ponderous a body to be naturally endowed with so dreadful a movement?

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Here's a video I made about a year or two ago. Imagine if Smith or Copernicus could actually see what they were talking about - to not have to imagine it. Humans now can actually 'float along with' the earth, and partake in that speed - and watch all of civilzation be glued to a ball surrounded in water. The glided part is towards the end. ('How ponderous a body with so dreadful a movement!')

1 comment:

  1. you may have to forward it. It gets stuck sometimes at minute 1:18 or so. I don't know why it does it

    ReplyDelete