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Re: historical physics (a bit on the long side - sorry)



Allen Brown wrote:
We're less successful at exploiting the faltering steps in mechanical
determinism, but we do want students to know that even Newton had some
misconceptions, for example, about the central force requirements of
planetary motion (it was one of his rivals, Hooke, that originally
proposed some kind of central force suggestion, while Newton was still
thinking about planets being dragged around, I believe). And, we want
students to get some idea of the staggering leap made by Newton to
associate motions near the Earth with those in the heavens. Finally, we
hoe that they will appreciate the difference between a description of a
phenomenon and an "explanation" of the phenomenon, and, of course, the
importance of mathematics as a descriptive tool.

Actually Newton seems to have studied Descartes' natural philosophy and
abandonned it while he was still an 'undergrad.' Descartes' motive
principle seems to have included the 'dragging around' notion via vortexes.
I do not know exactly what Newton adopted in the meantime, exactly, but...
The Cohen article in Sci Am, sometime in the Spring of 81, gives evidence
that Newton was thinking somehow in terms of centrifugal forces, that his
analysis of the moon's acceleration which apparently was following a line
of work by Huygens, while Newton was 'home from the plague,' was being
thought about in these terms by Newton at the time and up until Hooke
shared with him the idea of a central force analysis just a year or two
before the Principia was published. Even then N3 was not automatically
included until Newton realized the calculations did not work out to match
the observed motion of the planets well enough.

Dewey

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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/SN318 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@varney.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper
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