Overview

In developing his models for orbits and for classical gravity, Newton used the center of mass, a concept he inherited from antiquity, but as he used it, the center of mass inadvertently became a heuristic...where heuristics are rules of thumb, approximations or simplifications. We show that Newton's models for orbits and gravity are heuristics rather than the exact physics. In addition, in developing his gravitational model, there is another error, which occurred because he used a heuristic to simplify his model without knowing or proving that his model as he developed it and as we use it is a heuristic. In plain terms, Newton did not do what he said he was going to do in developing his gravitational model and did not validate what he did do. Newton applied inductive reasoning in accepting the universality of the center of mass as used in antiquity. We show that such an inductive extrapolation is wrong. We discuss the origin and consequences of the gravitational model error in considerable detail, because, if the accepted gravitational model is a heuristic, what is the correct model, and what are the consequences of having used the heuristic model for the past three hundred years? The discussions begin using simple algebra and logic, including using Newton's own words from his Principia Mathematica, to show that his gravitational model is a heuristic.

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9781729339916

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