Abstract
THE so-called Laws of Motion first explicitly stated, as we now employ them, by Newton in the Principia, are partly due to Galileo, partly to his immediate successors. Like all great physical discoveries, they were more or less clearly seen by many philosophers about the time in which Newton threw them into the simple, and yet comprehensive, form in which we now use them. As ordinarily understood, they embrace the results of observation and experiment as to the action of force on matter. The first tells us how matter behaves when not acted on by force, and therefore shows us how to detect the action of a force. The second tells us how to measure the force by its effects, and how to calculate the action of a force or forces acting on a mere particle of matter. The third, as directly interpreted, shows how to apply the other two to the motion of masses or of groups of particles. With these alone we have the foundation of an enormous portion of the science of Dynamics, and we require merely a sufficiently powerful mathematical process to enable us to develop to their utmost the calculations necessary for the determination of equilibrium or motion of any set of masses whatever, so long as the motion is visible, or capable of being rendered visible by a microscope.
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Energy, and Prof. Bain's Logic . Nature 3, 89–90 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/003089a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003089a0