Abstract
MANY English mathematicians are in the habit not only of using the word “force” in a certain technical sense—briefly, as cause of change of motion—but of regarding all other senses as loose and inaccurate. Of late years there has been an increasing tendency, largely due to Sir W. Thomson and Prof. Tait, to return to the methods of expressing dynamical principles used by Newton; so that at the present time his statement of the laws of motion is adopted to the exclusion of others which had usurped its place. This return to Newton has led to a very prevalent notion that for all the statements of fundamental dynamical principles current in modern English mathematical literature, we have his authority, and in particular for the above-mentioned restriction of the use of the word “force.” As the authority of Newton seems to me to be here claimed without warrant, and as Newton's conception of force cannot be without interest, I propose to examine as briefly as possible what this conception was. In doing so I shall assume that the English word “force” is the equivalent of Newton's Latin word vis.
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MAIN, P. Newton on Force. Nature 15, 8 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/015008a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/015008a0