Gravity

"The globe of the Earth stands supportless in space... Just as the [spherical] bulb of a Kadamba flower is covered all around by blossoms, just so is the globe of the Earth surrounded by all creatures, terrestrial as well as aquatic."

"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions."

"Moreover, force, gravity, and words of that kind, are often, and not unwisely, used in the concrete; in such a way that they know the movement of the body, the difficulty of resistance, etc. But when they are used by philosophers to signify certain natures, precise and abstract from all these, which are neither subject to the senses, nor can be understood by any power of the mind, nor can they be shaped by the imagination, they in turn give rise to errors and confusion."

"The earth attracts inert bodies in space towards itself. The attracted body appears to fall down on the earth. Since the space is homogeneous, where will the earth fall?"

"GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain -- the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B, makes B the proof of A."

"Our two greatest problems are gravity and paper work. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."

"In order that a pendulum may continue to make the same number of oscillations in a given time, it must be shortened as it is carried towards the equator; and the variation of its length in different latitudes affords an accurate measurement of the force of gravity. But the force of gravity has known relation to the figure of the earth, which, therefore, may be determined, by observing the length of the seconds pendulum at different points on its surface."

"Laplace made the assumption that the transmission of gravity is not instantaneous, and he found that in order to produce the known effects in the secular acceleration of the moon, gravity must travel seven million times faster than the speed of light. ...Laplace's calculation has been found to be incomplete, and his velocity of gravity illusory."