The Voice of Allan Zade
One man lived and worked in the Middle Ages, but unlike the others, he was interested in natural philosophy. His name was Galileo Galilei. According to modern sources, the following information about that man is available.
Galileo (born Feb. 15, 1564, Pisa [Italy], died Jan. 8, 1642, Arcetri, near Florence) in full Galileo Galilei, was Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method. His formulation of (circular) inertia, the law of falling bodies, and parabolic trajectories marked the beginning of a fundamental change in the study of motion. His insistence that the book of nature was written in the language of mathematics changed natural philosophy from a verbal, qualitative account to a mathematical one in which experimentation became a recognized method for discovering the facts of nature. Finally, his discoveries with the telescope revolutionized astronomy and paved the way for the acceptance of the Copernican heliocentric system, but his advocacy of that system eventually resulted in an Inquisition process against him.”
- Galileo. (2008). Encyclopedia Britannica 2008 Deluxe Edition. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.
That person's most famous experiment was with falling bodies. He used a device (Clepsydra) to determine the duration of each body fall process, making his point of view comparable with the experimentation process.
Clepsydra also called water clock is an ancient device for measuring time by the gradual flow of water. One form, used by the North American Indians and some African peoples, consisted of a small boat or floating vessel that shipped water through a hole until it sank. In another form, the vessel was filled with water that was allowed to escape through a hole, and the time was read from graduated lines on the interior measuring the level of the remaining water. It may have been an invention of the Chaldeans of ancient Babylonia; specimens from Egypt date from the 14th century BC. The Romans invented a clepsydra consisting of a cylinder into which water dripped from a reservoir; a float provided readings against a scale on the cylinder wall. Clepsydras were used for many purposes, including timing the speeches of orators; as late as the 16th century, Galileo used a mercury clepsydra to time his experimental falling bodies.
- clepsydra. (2008). Encyclopedia Britannica 2008 Deluxe Edition. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.
The first sentence of the above citation shows the relation between the number of different categories: time, water, clock, clepsydra, time measurement, and flow of water. What is the hash? That sentence makes perfect sense about how deep the modern mess is going in any attempt to explain anything that has reference to Time, but it is possible to remove all that trouble using the explanation given above about an attitude that rose steadily between the human mind and the surrounding world.
First, we must understand that clepsydra was a physical device used to indicate the duration of one physical process – gradual flow of water or running water drops from a reservoir. That process involved physical interaction between the Earth's gravitational field and water remaining in the reservoir. There is not any other physical activity involved in that process of interaction. It is well known that the theory of gravitation was invented later and was described firsthand only by Sir Isaac Newton (born December 25, 1642 [January 4, 1643, New Style], Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England; died March 20 [March 31], 1727, London)(Newton, Sir Isaac. (2008). Encyclopedia Britannica.). Hence, Galileo died Jan. 8, 1642 and Sir Isaac Newton was born January 4, 1643 (about one year later). Galileo was unable to perceive any concept of Newtonian gravitation. As a result, the cause and reason for water drops from the clepsydra’s reservoir was unknown to him.
He has one more problem in his experiments. Sundials seemed useless for his research because, unlike other people, that man liked to have measurements with a duration significantly less than the duration of a day and even less than the duration of an hour. At the beginning of the 17th century, such a device was still inaccessible. Hence, he used only one kind of device that was relevant to his experiments and could demonstrate a physical process with a tiny duration relative to the duration of an hour. Moreover, he used clepsydra to determine the duration of a body fall process without a correlation between the indication of the clepsydra and the city sundial (or any other sundial available for him). I mean that he only estimated the duration of the body fall process and the duration of the physical process of clepsydra (which was connected to the fall of the mercury drops). In other words, there was no relationship between his experiments and the Sun's location (or motion) in the sky. More than that, there was no physical connection between marks on a clepsydra's body and any phase of his experiment (the start and the stop moments of the body fall).
Observing falling bodies, Galileo needed some relevant units for his experiments. He could use a unit of length to determine the height of the tower he used. Still, he needed one more unit comparable to the duration of the body fall. The only acceptable tool for such measurement was a device that could make some events with regular intervals. They knew that device. It was sundial. The device produces several events during the day. Each event rises as soon as the pointer's shadow meets each hour mark. Still, Galileo's experiments were so fast that a sundial was useless for them. Hence, he could only achieve his goal by using a different device that could generate events more frequently. Only clepsydra was able to do that.
The device can be used in two ways. The first way involves using a clepsydra with marks on its body (reservoir). When a man opens a clepsydra, the liquid begins to run out, and the liquid level falls slowly. Obviously, that process starts as soon as the measuring process begins. As soon as the measuring process is completed, a person stops liquid leaking from the clepsydra, and the difference between the first level and the last level of liquid shows the duration of fluid flow.