History of science: Dante's insight into galilean invariance.

ABSTRACT

In 1632, Galileo described his experience of motion aboard a large ship and exposed in detail the invariance principle, which was then rightly named after him. I suggest that more than three centuries earlier, in The Divine Comedy, his fellow countryman Dante Alighieri intuitively grasped what Galileo was later to establish as one of the pillars of modern science.