Abstract
DESPITE the immensity of his achievement, Newton had scarcely done more than pose the problem of explaining the observed behaviour of the solar system in terms of his laws of motion and the inverse square law of gravitation. Until the full complexities of the observed behaviour of the planets and their satelltes had been shown to be deducible frome the Newtonian laws, philosophers might (and somethimes did) doubt whether gravitation alone was a sufficient principle of explanation in celestial mechanics. The task of completing the Newtonian celestial mechanics was largely carried out in the century after Newton's death by French mathematicians, and above all by Laplace.
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References
Grant, Robert, "History of Physical Astronomy", 106 (London, 1852).
For example, "Pantalogia, A New Cyclopædia" (London, 1813), article "Astronomy", cols. 13–14. I merely cite an example which happens to be on my shelves at the moment of writing.
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LILLEY, S. Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827). Nature 163, 468–469 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163468a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163468a0
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