Archimedes Texts

114
from the Earth, continue a good space of time in the Air, such
as are the Clouds, Birds of flight; and as of them it cannot be
said that they are rapt or transparted by the Earth, having no ad
hesion thereto, it seems not possible, that they should be able to
keep pace with the velocity thereof; nay it should rather seem
to us, that they all swiftly move towards the West: And if
being carried about by the Earth, passe our parallel in twenty
four hours, which yet is at least sixteen thousand miles, how can
Birds follow such a course or revolution? Whereas on the con
trary, we see them fly as well towards the East, as towards the
West, or any other part, without any sensible difference. More

over, if when we run a Horse at his speed, we feel the air beat
vehemently against our face, what an impetuous blast ought we
perpetually to feel from the East, being carried with so rapid a
course against the wind? and yet no such effect is perceived. Take
another very ingenious argument inferred from the following ex

periment. The circular motion hath a faculty to extrude and dis
sipate from its Centre the parts of the moving body, whensoever
either the motion is not very slow, or those parts are not very
well fastened together; and therefore, if v. g. we should turn
one of those great wheels very fast about, wherein one or more
men walking, crane up very great weights, as the huge massie
stone, used by the Callander for pressing of Cloaths; or the
fraighted Barks which being haled on shore, are hoisted out of
one river into another; in case the parts of that same Wheel so
swiftly turn'd round, be not very well joyn'd and pin'd together,
they would all be shattered to pieces; and though many stones or
other ponderous substances, should be very fast bound to its outward
Rimme, yet could they not resist the impetuosity, which with
great violence would hurl them every way far from the Wheel,
and consequently from its Centre. So that if the Earth did move
with such and so much greater velocity, what gravity, what tena
city of lime or plaister would keep together Stones, Buildings, and
whole Cities, that they should not be tost into the Air by so pre
cipitous a motion? And both men and beasts, which are not fa
stened to the Earth, how could they resist so great an impetus?
Whereas, on the other side, we see both these, and far lesse re
sistances of pebles, sands, leaves rest quietly on the Earth, and
to return to it in falling, though with a very slow motion. See
here, Simplicius, the most potent arguments, taken, to so speak,
from things Terrestrial; there remain those of the other kind,
namely, such as have relation to the appearances of Heaven,
which reasons, to confesse the truth, tend more to prove the
Earth to be in the centre of the Universe, and consequently, to
deprive it of the annual motion about the same, ascribed unto it