HOW NEWTON'S LAW (THE LAW OF TWO-BODY GRAVITATION) BECAME CALLED THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION

This article attempts to dispel the biggest myth surrounding Newton's law of gravitation for over 300 years. The history of the term "law of universal gravitation" and the negative consequences of its unjustified application to the law of two-body gravity are revealed. This term was preceded by Robert Hooke's term "universal attraction," which referred not to the law of gravity between two bodies, but to the attraction between all bodies in the universe. In addition to the term "universal gravitation," Robert Hooke gave a verbal formulation of the future law of universal gravitation, which was radically different from Newton's verbal formulation. The term “law of universal gravitation” was not coined by Isaac Newton. It was not Newton, but popularizers who began to unjustifiably use the term “law of universal gravitation” in relation to the local law of gravity of two bodies F = GmM/r². The substitution of terms created the illusion that the law of universal gravitation had been discovered and that no other laws of gravity existed. From an ethical perspective, this substitution led to a historical injustice, as a result of which Hooke's contribution in the shadows for over three centuries. In science, this led to the true law of universal gravitation, as Robert Hooke envisioned it, never being discovered.