Newtonian Physics

The force of gravitation, as we use today in theoretical physics, was invented by Newton through the generalization of two observational facts. One of them regards the fall of bodies on Earth. It was known from Galileo that the fall is a uniformly accelerated motion down the vertical direction, i.e. toward the center of the Earth. The other is the observation that whenever we are in a vehicle moving fast and following the turn of a road, our body feels a force pulling towards the outer side of the road. If our vehicle moves in circle the pull is permanent, can be associated with a force and can thus be extended to everything that moves in a circle, provided we accept the existence and uniqueness of matter.

And so it comes that, due to the uniqueness of the matter, the planets in the heavens of the Copernican Universe can be assumed to be permanently acted upon by a centrifugal force, like our body in the vehicle turning in a circle. As the planets are forever there, completing their orbits according to the Copernican idea, and as we know, for instance from a stone hurled by a slinger, that if a centripetal force wouldn’t exist they would go free in the Universe, Newton invented the centripetal force. This was supposed to be opposite to the centrifugal force in order to keep the planet in place.

Newton resolved that this centripetal force is the same as our daily gravity. For this he first assumed that the gravity is universal and that the acceleration of the fall of bodies is determined by it. One of the hard proving facts of the theory is that the centripetal acceleration of the Moon is to the gravitational acceleration on Earth in the correct ratio given by the assumption of the universality of gravitational forces.

Newton’s procedure of calculation of the forces he invented, consists of comparing two centripetal forces giving the same orbit in the same time period, but acting in different directions. The ratio of these forces can then be algebraically expressed only in terms of the elements of orbit. Whence, if one of the forces is known, the other can readily be found by algebraic procedures. This way not only the motion of the planets can be accurately described, but also the magnetic action and even the light, in a manner which may be termed dual to that of Fresnel.

One of the strange things coming out of this Newtonian calculation, is that the motion revealed by this calculation is somehow degenerate – to use a modern term. More to the point the eccentricity, considered as a vector is not determined in direction but only in magnitude, assuming that the motion has unique initial conditions. It’s like saying that the attraction point is not where it was supposed to be, but in a small region around that point, meaning that when it is assumed to be universal the gravitation does not pull towards the center of the Earth, but is somehow biased.

This result of the positive science takes us two millennia back to the great Greek philosopher Epicurus, who imagined the atoms as falling under the action of gravity. However, in order to account for grouping of the atoms into matter formations, he accepted that there is always an unpredictable and undetectable swerving from the straight line of motion of atoms, a declination of the direction of motion. Karl Marx, in more recent times, in his doctoral dissertation, was the one who attached this speculation to the Hegelian philosophy, and he seems to be right.

Indeed, the old Epicurean idea of motion of the atoms is of the same degree of generality as the Newtonian idea of action of gravitation. However, the Newtonian idea, sustained by the modern mathematics, proved by calculations what Epicurus just speculated: the center of gravity is never in the point where it is supposed to be! Instead of looking for its correct placement, it seems that we have to accept this indetermination of the center of attraction as a law. It is described by the hyperbolic geometry, the very same describing the contemporary atomic nucleus by Skyrmions. It seems impossible to describe the gravitation as universal, if this universality is not referred somehow to the structure of the matter.