NIF: Kepler question

["Rauber, Joel Phys" <RAUBERJ@mg.sdstate.edu>]

Bennet wrote:

> I didn't want to clutter the whole list with this question.

No clutter.

> Can you assure me that your astronomers managed to derive
> the two force laws without resort to the things you have not
> yet demonstrated?

I think you have to allow my astronomers and physicists the ability to have 
done experiments, by watching accelerations of objects under controled 
conditions to have concluded that two mass attract with the usual law: 
 GMm/(dist)^2 and that there is an outward pointing force on objects equal 
to m*C*distance(from coord. origin). after a few hundred years, the 
astronomers and the physicists got together and discovered that the 
numerically measured value of C happened to equal 4 pi^2/T^2.
Nobody bothered to investigate this odd coincidence to deduce the fact that 
the  centrifugal force was a kinematic force, i.e. figured out that there 
was an inertial frame we could analyze the situation in. The theologians, 
assured us that the odd coincidence was the way the universe was made. 
 Hence, they continue to do dynamics by solving Newton's laws in there frame 
of reference with the centrifugal force as one of the forces present when 
solving problems.

If this scenario is not agreeable to people as not violating the conditions 
of the problem, then there is no point in my going on. Obviously, I don't 
think it violates the conditions of the problem.

I don't think this is too different from my asking someone to derive 
Kepler's law in an inertial frame and agreeing that that frames physicists 
were clever enough to deduce the gravitational force law.

BTW I just noticed that Marlow seems to agree that this is OK.

Joel Rauber
rauberj@mg.sdstate.edu