Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Let them garden!

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: KNat <knat AT sprintmail.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Let them garden!
  • Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2006 01:38:37 -0600

VAN DELL JORDAN wrote:
I do remember reading about a tribe somewhere who
cooked eggs by rolling them back and forth in a sort
of sling, letting friction provide the heat. May or
may not be true but makes an interesting image.
Van Dell
Galileo felt otherwise

* From a letter to the Dowager Grand Duchess Cristina, June, 1615*

I cannot refrain from marveling that Sarsi [a pseudonym for the Jesuit Grassi] will persist in proving to me, by authorities, that which at any moment I can bring to the test of experiment. . . If Sarsi insists that I must believe, on Suidas's credit, that the Babylonians cooked eggs by swiftly whirling them in a sling, I will believe it; but I must say, that the cause of such an effect is very remote from that to which it is attributed, and to find the true cause I shall reason thus. If an effect does not follow with us which followed with others at another time, it is because, in our experiment, something is wanting which was the cause of the former success; and if only one thing is wanting to us, that one thing is the true cause. Now we have eggs, and slings, and strong men to whirl them, and yet they will not become cooked; no, if they were hot at first they more quickly become cold. And since nothing is wanting to us but to be Babylonians, it follows that being Babylonians is the true cause why the eggs became cooked, and not the friction of the air, which is what I wish to prove.






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page