Literature and Gravity

 

Gravity

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Definitions, abstracted from the OED which divides the senses of gravity into (I) "The Quality of being GRAVE" and (II) "Physical Senses"

 

I. The Quality of being GRAVE

  1. Weight, influence, authority.
  2. Grave, weighty, or serious character or nature; importance, seriousness. Of Literature, style, etc.
  3. Weighty dignity; reverend seriousness; serious or solemn conduct or demeanour befitting a ceremony, an office, etc.; staidness. Opposed to levity and gaity.

 

II. Physical Senses

  1. The quality of having weight, ponderability; the tendency to downward motion, regarded in ancient physics as a property inherent in certain bodies (opposed to levity, or the upward tendency ascribed, e.g., to the element of fire).
  2. The attractive force by which all bodies tend to move towards the centre of the earth; the degree of intensity with which a body in any given position is affected by this force, measured by the amount of acceleration produced. Also often in wider sense, the degree of intensity with which one body is affected by the attraction of gravitation exercised by another body. absol. A force equal to the accelerating force of gravity; abbrev. g.
  3. Heaviness, sluggishness (of bodily condition).
  4. Of sounds: Lowness of pitch.

 

Philonus: ...if extension be once acknowledged to have no existence without the mind, the same must necessarily be granted of motion, solidity, and gravity, since they all evidently suppose extension. It is therefore superfluous to inquire particularly concerning each of them. In denying extension, you have denied them all to have any real existence.

 

Hylas: I wonder, Philonous, if what you say be true, why those philosophers who deny the secondary qualities any real existence, should yet attribute it to the primary. If there is no difference between them, how can this be accounted for?

 

1713, Bishop Berkeley: Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (First Dialogue)

 

Newton's Gravity:

Einstein's Gravity: Einstein envisioned gravity as a curvature of space-time caused by the matter in it, as opposed to Newton’s idea of a force acting at a distance. Although objects try to move through space-time in straight lines, this warpage makes their paths appear bent.

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