Momentum is a humorous phrase. It has an odd historical past inside language, and there’s nonetheless some tutorial disagreement about exactly once we started utilizing it in a scientific capability.
As early as 530 AD, we have now documented arguments concerning the idea, as John Philoponus (a thinker and theologian from Roman-held Egypt) wrote a commentary apposing Aristotle’s idea of physics, arguing that an impetus was imparted to any object within the act of throwing it, basically predicting the scientific idea of inertia.
It wasn’t till the late 1600’s and early 1700’s that the phrase actually began to see tutorial use although, as English mathematicians John Wallis, John Jennings, and Isaac Newton formalized mathematical theories and legal guidelines utilizing the phrase momentum as a scientific time period.
That it took so lengthy to come back to a consensus on the phrase is fascinating. It had existed in Latin since no less than 75 BC (and presumably earlier as ‘mowementom’ in Proto-Italic), and but it took virtually 1800 years to make its means into the widespread lexicon.
I imply, nearly your complete Roman Empire spoke Latin at one level, and but it took that lengthy. It defies logic, or no less than a point of mathematical likelihood.
The foundation of the problem, I feel, comes from its linguistic doublets, the phrases ‘second’ and ‘motion’.
It is sensible in a sensible form of means. Why use momentum to explain movement when you have already got motion? Why use it to explain an area of time when you can use second as a substitute?
However that’s the factor about momentum, it’s not likely a static time period, it incorporates multitudes.
You could possibly use it to explain the best way that the Spurs regarded by the top of the primary quarter, because the Hawks started to surge their solution to a lead that regarded like it might stretch to double digits based mostly on the best way that Spurs gamers had been unable to a lot as purchase a shot.
You could possibly additionally use it to explain the best way that the Spurs all of the sudden discovered their kind within the minutes after their two-way marvel David Jones Garcia took the court docket, as he, Keldon Johnson, and former two-way standout Julian Champagnie started to take it to a Hawks crew in shock on the aggression of San Antonio’s bench gamers.
You could possibly even use it to explain the best way the once-animated residence crowd started to react to the type of third-quarter swoon they’ve grown to worry most from the Silver and Black in a post-Massive-Three world.
There’s one thing within the phrase that carries a type of pressure, an elasticity of expectation and power. It’s not simply that the phrase is describing motion, but additionally the cessation of it, that imbues the phrase with qualities of each hope and worry.
And hope and worry cowl mainly your complete spectrum of emotion you may really feel as a sports activities fan watching your favourite crew. It’s not simply the peak of drama, however the glimmering shard of actuality that pierces the human coronary heart.
If we’re trustworthy, our lives are themselves full of the echoes of those self same hopes and fears, acted out in proxy on a hardwood court docket teeming with the goals of youth and the load of expertise.
We crave their victory out of a want to be related to it in some small means. We grieve their losses as a result of they really feel private to us in the identical method.
It’s an unstated property of momentum that one good factor occurring to you begets both the sensation of extra to come back, or the nervousness of the alternative. A win could make the subsequent day really feel higher in a means that’s onerous to quantify.
I ought to know, since I’ve principally been writing about losses for years. It’s a pleasant change of tempo. And but, it stirs inside me an consciousness of the brevity of all of it. It’s straightforward to overlook that Spurs followers skilled two-plus many years of victory in a way that is still unmatched within the trendy period of the NBA.
This second may finish, and shortly, earlier than it even actually begins. And there are accidents and absences that remind us of that even in victory.
However that’s the beauty of momentum: it’s not constrained to only a second in time. There may be, if truth be told, no restrict to the phrase, solely the concept there may be one.
It’s an idea that may bind itself to time for longer than a blink and fewer than a millennia. Momentum is each as everlasting and as transient as our perception in it.
Aristotle believed that momentum (as he conceived it) was an unseen inside power that propelled residing beings by way of each life and time itself. One thing inside and intangible tied to very nature of residing that carried us by way of the highs and lows.
Watching Julian Champagnie lastly levitate into the type of dunk that he’s been attempting to put down for years, I couldn’t assist however agree.
Once more, and once more, and once more he had tried, regardless of blocks and misses, a vertical that will make Invoice Laimbeer blush, and a deal with that falls nicely in need of league common.
One thing inside him had moved him to pursue it – to chase that second regardless of defeat and embarrassment. And the second that he did it, even with six minutes left within the sport, it felt like a nail within the coffin. That’s momentum for you, crystallized right into a single spotlight, however carrying itself to finish of the competition, and past.
I don’t know what the longer term will convey, for myself or the Spurs. However I do know that they maintain profitable video games that they shouldn’t, with gamers they shouldn’t, with out gamers they want. And for the primary time in a very long time, that looks like momentum.
Right here’s to hoping it by no means ends. Cheers.
Enjoying You Out – The Theme Track of the Night:
Gaining Momentum by MC Hammer
