From experience and learning you know that bodies don’t move unless something moves them, and they don’t stop moving unless something stops moving them. Thank Galileo for that principle of inertia. If he were a psychologist, he might have applied the same principle to human behavior.
Isolated bodies behave in a single way unless something changes their behavior. So, friction intervenes to stop a rolling ball, changing its behavior. What about people? Isolated people have behavioral inertia. There’s no force (or reason) to change, to slow, or to alter direction (or behavior). That’s where you come in. Someone out there in the Land of Behavioral Inertia is isolated and moving along without impediment toward an eventual collision with… Well, think of it this way. Even a spacecraft like Voyager, traveling into deepest space beyond the solar system, will eventually run into something or will alter either speed or direction when it encounters the gravitation of another body.
Each of us can exert either a frictional force or a gravitational one. Each of us can alter the inertial behavior of another headed for a collision. If Galileo were a psychologist, he might urge us all to be intervening forces to prevent potentially destructive behavior. Just remember your Galilean physics: Isolated bodies in motion continue their motion unless acted upon by a force. Isolation might be good for spacecraft, but not for people with detrimental behavior.
Isolated bodies behave in a single way unless something changes their behavior. So, friction intervenes to stop a rolling ball, changing its behavior. What about people? Isolated people have behavioral inertia. There’s no force (or reason) to change, to slow, or to alter direction (or behavior). That’s where you come in. Someone out there in the Land of Behavioral Inertia is isolated and moving along without impediment toward an eventual collision with… Well, think of it this way. Even a spacecraft like Voyager, traveling into deepest space beyond the solar system, will eventually run into something or will alter either speed or direction when it encounters the gravitation of another body.
Each of us can exert either a frictional force or a gravitational one. Each of us can alter the inertial behavior of another headed for a collision. If Galileo were a psychologist, he might urge us all to be intervening forces to prevent potentially destructive behavior. Just remember your Galilean physics: Isolated bodies in motion continue their motion unless acted upon by a force. Isolation might be good for spacecraft, but not for people with detrimental behavior.
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