> Impetus theory
> 
> The concept of inertia was alien to the physics of Aristotle.
> Aristotle, and his peripatetic followers, held that a body was only
> maintained in motion by the action of a continuous external force.
> Thus, in the Aristotelian view, a projectile moving through the air
> would owe its continuing motion to eddies or vibrations in the
> surrounding medium, a phenomenon known as antiperistasis. In the
> absence of a proximate force, the body would come to rest almost
> immediately.
> 
> Jean Buridan, following in the footsteps of John Philoponus and
> Avicenna, proposed that motion was maintained by some property of the
> body, imparted when it was set in motion. Buridan named the
> motion-maintaining property impetus. Moreover, he rejected the view
> that the impetus dissipated spontaneously (this is the big difference
> between Buridan's theory of impetus and his predecessors), asserting
> that a body would be arrested by the forces of air resistance and
> gravity which might be opposing its impetus. Buridan further held that
> the impetus of a body increased with the speed with which it was set
> in motion, and with its quantity of matter. Clearly, Buridan's impetus
> is closely related to the modern concept of momentum. Buridan saw
> impetus as causing the motion of the object. Buridan anticipated Isaac
> Newton when he wrote:
> 
>     ...after leaving the arm of the thrower, the projectile would be moved by an impetus given to it by the thrower and would continue to
> be moved as long as the impetus remained stronger than the resistance,
> and would be of infinite duration were it not diminished and corrupted
> by a contrary force resisting it or by something inclining it to a
> contrary motion (Questions on Aristotle's Metaphysics XII.9).[2]
> 
> Buridan used the theory of impetus to give an accurate qualitative
> account of the motion of projectiles but he ultimately saw his theory
> as a correction to Aristotle, maintaining core peripatetic beliefs
> including a fundamental qualitative difference between motion and
> rest.
> 
> The theory of impetus was also adapted to explain celestial phenomena
> in terms of circular impetus.[citation needed]

This sounds a lot to me like some of the theories that made Newtons a house hold name.

So my question is why has Buridan faded into obscurity and Newton's name been venerated as a God among scientists?