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Newton and the Reality of Force
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 45, Number 1, January 2007
- pp. 127-147
- 10.1353/hph.2007.0010
- Article
- Additional Information
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Newton's critics argued that his treatment of gravity in the Principia saddles him with a substantial dilemma. If he insists that gravity is a real force, he must invoke action at a distance because of his explicit failure to characterize the mechanism underlying gravity. To avoid distant action, however, he must admit that gravity is not a real force, and that he has therefore failed to discover the actual cause of the phenomena associated with it. A reinterpretation of Newton's distinction between the "mathematical" and the "physical" treatment of force indicates how he can reject each horn of this dilemma.