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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 Excerpt: ...upon the formal propositions in the description or by the imagination, is something superadded to their only real sanction as laws of nature. There may seem to be in the statement of the law of gravitation, as usually given and as enunciated above, something conflicting with the positive position here laid down. When it is said that one mass of matter attracts another, or, as Newton himself enun 162 HYPOTHESES NON FINGO. ciated the law, every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle, it might appear as if a mode of action was declared in the proposition; and I have no doubt that the law is so understood by nine out of ten of the students who repeat the statement. But Newton intended to convey no such conception; and no such conception was received by the scholars for whom he wrote. It is true, however, that one mode of explaining the law is to assume that there resides in the ultimate particles of matter some unknown virtue which determines the attraction. But this is a pure hypothesis, one of those redundancies referred to above, for which the law must not be held accountable. When Newton himself was asked whether he had any conception of this kind he is said to have replied: Hypotheses non fingo. Moreover, the whole tendency of modern science is entirely opposed to any theory which assumes an inherent potency in the particles of matter; and, in the case of gravitation, such an hypothesis, as we shall see in the next lecture, is beset with insuperable difficulties and objections. It would be better if we could enunciate the law without using the word attract; but this cannot be done without an awkward circumlocution. Of course what is meant is simply that two bodies, if free to move, would act as ...

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