Mean speed theorem

[3] Clay tablets used in Babylonian astronomy (350–50 BC) present trapezoid procedures for computing Jupiter's position and motion.

[4] The medieval scientists demonstrated this theorem—the foundation of "the law of falling bodies"—long before Galileo, who is generally credited with it.

Oresme's proof is also the first known example of the modelization of a physical problem as a mathematical function with a graphical representation, as well as of an early form of integration.

The mathematical physicist and historian of science Clifford Truesdell, wrote:[5] The now published sources prove to us, beyond contention, that the main kinematical properties of uniformly accelerated motions, still attributed to Galileo by the physics texts, were discovered and proved by scholars of Merton college....

In principle, the qualities of Greek physics were replaced, at least for motions, by the numerical quantities that have ruled Western science ever since.

Almost immediately, Giovanni di Casale and Nicole Oresme found how to represent the results by geometrical graphs, introducing the connection between geometry and the physical world that became a second characteristic habit of Western thought ...The theorem is a special case of the more general kinematics equations for uniform acceleration.