Chapter Two - Space and Time

Chapter Two in A Brief History of Time delves into space and time. Hawking reflects on the ideas of how motion worked in the past to how we believe it works present day. He states that our present ideas are stemmed from the works of Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton. Before then, however, people believed in the idea that the natural state of a body was to be at rest and that it moved only if driven by a force or impulse. This notion was set in place by Aristotle. Aristotle also stated that one could work out all of the laws that govern the universe by pure thought... if only that were true!