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As for knowing the historical development of Newton's mechanics, I'm far
from an expert, so I just did some reading in Feyman's lectures. Feynman
stated that Newton used Kepler's 2nd and 3rd laws to deduce (Feynman's
word) the law of gravitation. If Feynman's reading of history is
correct, K's laws, rather than being only an interesting stop in the
development of Newton's law of gravitation, were crucial to its
development. That being the case, would it not be useful for students to
be shown how Kepler's analyses of Brahe's observations were used by
Newton to deduce a physical model. Moreover, as the logic behind the
demonstration would loosely follow Newton's logic in deducing the law of
gravitation, would we not preserve the integrity of the experience for
the students?