“Any body completely or partially submerged in a fluid (gas or liquid) at rest
is acted upon by an upward, or buoyant, force,
the magnitude of which is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the body.“
Archimedes
“Newton’s third law states that when two bodies interact,
they apply forces to one another that are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.“
“Criterion of falsifiability, in the philosophy of science, a standard of evaluation of putatively scientific theories,
according to which a theory is genuinely scientific only if it is possible in principle to establish that it is false.
The British philosopher Sir Karl Popper (1902–94) proposed the criterion as a foundational method of the empirical sciences.“
Obviously, this is a portrait of a Praying Mantis. It has nothing to do with any of the above mentioned individuals.
Basically, Archimedes and Isaac Newton described the very same thing. An interaction between two ‘objects’.
There are two apparent differences and a way more insidious one.
Archimedes’ law is about stationary situations. The opposing forces are equal for only as long as the objects ‘stay put’.
Newton’s law is also valid when the two objects move. An axe moving through a log is met by an opposing force. While the axe cannot exert more force upon the log than the amount needed to split it in half.
The second apparent difference being ‘time’.
Archimedes was trying to solve a problem. He was an empiricist. Living in a profoundly transactional world. Where gods evolved along with the rest of the living realm and where people negotiated their lives/fates with the ruling gods.
Isaac Newton lived in a completely different world from Archimedes’. One supposedly created from scratch by an outside agent. Hence perfect. And in perfect equilibrium with itself. Where people had their established places…
The insidious difference being, in fact, a similitude of sorts. Archimedes was not only trying to understand what was going on but also to widen the use of his freshly acquired knowledge. Not only to understand ‘flotation’ and to design better boats but also to solve the ‘Golden Crown Problem‘.
Isaac Newton was a theorist. He wasn’t trying to solve anything. Only to understand. To figure out.
Neither of them had discovered anything. Logs floated long before Archimedes noticed the phenomenon while things had been falling towards the center of the Earth since always.
Both are excellent examples of how humans amass knowledge and thus rebuild the reality around them.
Why did I mentioned Popper?
Because according to Popper’s Criterion, what both Archimedes and Newton had done has nothing to do with ‘science’. Go falsify flotation and gravity! Or Euclid’s postulate regarding parallel lines…
Postulates have nothing to do with science? By definition? There are alternatives to Euclidean Geometry?
Our understanding of what ‘science’ means is not exactly fixed? A work in progress?
