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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
For many things lead me to have a suspicion that all phenomena may depend on certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by causes not yet known, either are impelled toward one another and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled from one another and recede. Since these forces are unknown, philosophers have hitherto made trial of nature in vain. But I hope that the principles set down here will shed some light on either this mode of philosophizing or some truer one.
– Preface to first edition of the PrincipiaIt is widely recognized that Newton's Principia helped to bring the vocabulary of “force” into what was then called natural philosophy and, later, into what became mathematical physics. Newton declares that he composed the Principia precisely to determine the forces of nature and, of course, the highlight of the Principia is the so-called derivation, in its third and final book, of the law governing the force of gravity. Yet Newton's various pronouncements regarding his “mathematical” treatment of force – mentioned already in ch. 2 – often muddy the waters.
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