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RE: Gedankening



Sorry, Joel, but I don't agree with your characterization of
Newton's first law (N1). I think that the real meaning of N1 is
"there exist inertial frames". That is not a proposition that can be
demonstrated by experiment, because it is a definition.
You could sharpen the discussion by picking a different example.

Regards,
Jack

Inertial reference frames exist by definition? I'm sitting here trying to
imagine if there are really any inertial reference frames in the universe.
I can't think of any. That tells me that N1, rather than asserting that
IRFs exist, tell us how objects that find themselves in IRFs behave.
Whether this amounts to a definition or not, I think is debatable.

BTW, my understanding of the history is that this idea was really from
Galileo, and Newton incorporated it into his scheme.

Hugh

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Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better." So I bought a Macintosh.
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