Related papers: Newton On Absolute Space: A Commentary
Space and time are central concepts for understanding our World. They are important ingredients at the core of every scientific theory and subject of intense debate in philosophy. Albert Einstein's Special and General theories of Relativity…
Newton's Principia, when it appeared in 1687, was received with the greatest admiration, not only by the foremost mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, but also by philosophers like Voltaire and Locke and by members of the educated…
Isaac Newton is usually associated with the idea of absolute space and time, and with ballistic light-corpuscle arguments. However, Newton was also a proponent of wave/particle duality, and published a "new" variable-density aether model in…
The fact that mass has an effect on surrounding space is the first essential element of general relativity. This paper unifies this mass/space distinction of general relativity with Newtonian gravity at a subatomic scale and with reported…
Newtons Laws of Motion form the basis of classical mechanics, but misconceptions about their interrelationships persist in pedagogy. A prevalent misunderstanding is that Newtons First Law is a trivial consequence of the Second Law. This…
In this article it is shown that a careful analysis of Kant's "Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces" leads to a conclusion that does not match the usually accepted interpretation of Kant's reasoning in 1747, according to which…
From antiquity the conceptual perception of space changed painfully and at a relatively slow pace. It went through mythological descriptions, religious beliefs, metaphysical worldviews and cosmological models with a mechanistic structure,…
Planck's formula and General Relativity indicate that potential energy influences spacetime. Using Einstein's Equivalence Principle and an extension of his Chock Hypothesis, an explicit description of this influence is derived. We present a…
Newton's First Law of Motion is typically understood to govern only the motion of force-free bodies. This paper argues on textual and conceptual grounds that it is in fact a stronger, more general principle. The First Law limits the extent…
The question of the nature of space around us has occupied thinkers since the dawn of humanity, with scientists and philosophers today implicitly assuming that space is something that exists objectively. Here we show that this does not have…
Dans ce colloque je discute la notion d'espace selon Descartes et Leibniz et j'y oppose le point de vue de Samuel Clarke et Isaac Newton comme solution pour comprendre la r\'ealit\'e du monde physique
Newton's basic ideas developed and evolved throughout his career and changed in sometimes surprisingly profound ways. In this paper I propose an outline of the evolution of Newton's conceptual framework by following the development of his…
IIn the paper the Space-Time problem is considered as it seen in the informational conception ("the Information as Absolute" conception) comparing with a number of existent physical and philosophical approaches. Since the conception is…
During the past 25 years there has been a controversy regarding the adequacy of Newton's proof of Prop. 1 in Book 1 of the {\it Principia}. This proposition is of central importance because its proof of Kepler's area law allowed Newton to…
A closer look (with hindsight) at Newtonian and relativistic kinematics reveals two things. Not surprisingly, Newtonian time remains the empty and artificial - albeit useful - figment it is known to be. Quite unexpectedly however it turns…
The aim of this short note is to realize that the main reason for non-mechanistic explanation of Newton's gravitational attraction, is explicitly encapsulated in his famous General Scholium of the second Edition of Principia Mathematica…
In Newtonian gravity it is a moot question whether energy should be localized in the field or inside matter. An argument from relativity suggests a compromise in which the contribution from the field in vacuum is positive definite. We show…
We first see that the inertia of Newtonian mechanics is absolute and troublesome. General relativity can be viewed as Einstein's attempt to remedy, by making inertia relative, to matter---perhaps imperfectly though, as at least a couple of…
The physical world is quantum. However, our description of the quantum physics still relies much on concepts in classical physics and in some cases with `quantized' interpretations. The most important case example is that of spacetime. We…
The manuscripts that presumably contained Newton's early development of the fundamental concepts that led to his Principia have been lost. A plausible reconstruction of this development is presened based on Newton's exchange of letters with…