Wolfgang Korsus Dipl.-Ing.NT, Astrophysiker
Klingenberg 40
D-25451 Quickborn
Mobil 01625680456
Website : wolfgang.korsus.net
the Speed of light ?…a
The next episode is about crucial questions and they are called quite simply :
How can we understand light and the speed of light ?
What is light, something immediate, instantaneous ? The next question. Or does it need time, like other movements do ? How can we determine that ?
These foregoing questions existed for a very long time. Galilei often occupied himself with it.
There was already 300 years B.C. , at that time it was Aristotle, he complained strongly that Empedocles said, the light of the sun first crosses an intermediate space before it meets our eyes…. .on our earth.
Aristotle said for sure, the light is not a movement. His personal opinion determined the western thinking for almost two thousand years. It is hard to believe nowadays. The speed of light is infinite – a statement even of great scientists and philosophers like Kepler and Descartes. They were firmly convinced of it.
Descartes even tended to the most interesting statement, because he said boldly and not strongly considering ::
„It is so certain that – should it ever prove false – I should have to confess to knowing nothing of philosophy“.
Galileo kept chewing on the question and taking it up again. He also suggested a method of solution to which I would have shot myself :experiment.