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654 Oiitlmes of European History on the sun ; these indicated that the sun was not, as Aristotle had taught, a perfect, unchanging body, and showed also that it revolved on its axis, as Copernicus had guessed that the earth did. Galileo made careful experiments by dropping objects from Fig. 224. Rene Descartes the leaning tower of Pisa (Fig. 170), which proved that Aristotle was wrong in assuming that a body weighing a hundred pounds fell a hundred times as fast as a body weighing but one. 1 o Galileo we owe, besides, many new ideas in the science of me- chanics. He wrote in Italian as well as Latin, and this, too, gave offense to those who pinned their faith to Aristotle, They would
