[t_mann]

> He certainly got some things wrong like heavier things falling faster than lighter ones

That's wrong only if you stop at Galileo. If you go a bit further, Newton's laws tell you that the gravitational force between earth and a higher-mass object is stronger than with a lower-mass object (specifically, F = G m_1 m_2 / r^2). So the heavier object will hit the ground faster, not by virtue of accelerating faster, but by pulling earth towards it a bit more than the lighter object.

Arguably, that's not what Aristotle meant, though, and it's completely negligible for all practical purposes. But then again, once you factor in air drag and especially buoyancy, it's really not as simple as saying that all objects "fall" at the same rate. Unless you want to argue for contrived definitions where you say that perfectly stable floating objects are "falling". It is in fact relatively easy to perform experiments where objects fall at close to zero or even negative speeds (upwards).