¶ Force Lines: Omnidirectional Lines of Force (2)
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already constructed inside the parallelogram and that external equidistant extension of the diagonal of the parallelogram was called the resultant of forces. In the Navy I had also been taught Galileo’s parallelogram of forces. . . For some reason that I don’t know of it was never considered at the U.S. Naval Academy that when two ships ran into each other, Galileo’s force diagram told us that following the collision as indicated by the ‘resultant of forces’ the two ships were supposed to waltz north-northeast for 12 miles together. I saw as indeed most all sane men see that such behavior was just what the ships didn’t display after collision. One of them went in toward the center of the Earth and that wasn’t in the diagram. I decided that this criticism was typical of my general suspicion that we were not starting with the right set of axioms or simplest concepts. . .
“So one of the two ships colliding on the wavy surface of spherical Earth goes towards Earth’s center. One of them does go a few hundred feet in the direction of Galileo’s resultant of forces, but not 12 miles. We find that in reality four forces are operating. Two accelerate conically together, rising from Earth, plus gravity, plus the resultant.” '64
