Table of Contents

Newton’s mathematical force

The fundamental question

  1. I say that Newton’s supernatural cause he calls “force” is supernatural and it does not exist in nature and it cannot be used as a cause to explain natural phenomena. Following the 17th-century enlightenment, known as the “Scientific Revolution,” scientists no longer rely on supernatural, occult, or mysterious causes—regardless of the euphemisms used—to explain the workings of nature. No one who call himself a scientist will attemp to use supernatural causes to explain natural effects. This is a pre-scientifi attitude. So how come the Newtonians, namely, the physicists still proudly use Newton’s supernatural cause to explain natural effects?
  2. The answer is very simple. They still repeat like parrots Newton’s sophistry that has become the official propaganda of physics. And this is what I want to look at here.

Newtonian propaganda

  1. Newtonian propaganda says that Newton used his supernatural force only as a mathematical ploy. Maybe they don’t exactly use the word “ploy” but what Newton did amounts deception by using rhetorical sophistry.
  2. Here, this is Gemini repeating the official Newtonian propaganda:

Newton, on the other hand, was not concerned with providing a mechanical explanation for gravity. He was primarily interested in developing a mathematical theory that could accurately predict the motions of the planets. His law of universal gravitation, which states that any two objects with mass attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, was able to do just that.

  1. Newton, on the other hand, was not concerned with providing a mechanical explanation for gravity.
    1. This is not true. Or, more correctly, Newton’s supernatural cause called “force” or “gravity” does not admit a mechanical explanation. Newton, does not give a mechanical explanation because by definition his supernatural cause does not have, and cannot have a mechanical cause. It is defined as a non-mechanical cause. It is as silly to talk about the mechanical cause of Newton’s supernatural cause called “gravity” than to talk about the mechanical cause of God. Newton also uses God as a supernatural cause. Do we ask Newton what is the mechanical cause of God? No.
    2. Here, we note once again that words such as “force” and “gravity” are euphemisms used by Newton to hide the fact that he is using a supernatural cause to explain natural causes. Calling a supernatural cause “gravity” does make that supernatural cause a physical cause. Any where we see Newton using the words “force” or “gravity” we can replace it with the words “supernatural cause” because Newton’s force is a supernatural cause.
  2. Newton was primarily interested in developing a mathematical theory that could accurately predict the motions of the planets.
    1. This is what they say. They imply that Newton devised a purely mathematical theory, in this theory, there is no mention of particles attracting particles, masses attracting masses, it’s all mathematical.
    2. How can attraction be purely mathematical? So they meant to say that “we compute this quantity call ”attraction“ mathematically, but we don’t care what attraction mean.
    3. No, this is bullshit. Newtonian bullshit. You cannot do such a thing.
    4. These are all Newton’s sophisticated plays on words. Newton’s sophistry.
    5. We must question every dynamical sounding words he is using. Also we don’t care what Newton said about these words. We only look at what Newton does with these words. Does he have mathematical model where he is using this force of his that causes this attraction? No? Newton throws in words like “force”, “gravity”, “centripetal force”, “attraction”, “mass” but he never uses any of these in his actual calculations because Newton uses only Kepler’s Rule to compute orbits. Either he spins a yarn using these dynamical sounding words but these words never enter calculations of orbits.
    6. So I really don’t understand what is meant by Newton using just mathematical tools to describe orbits. There is only one mathematical tool or rule that you can use orbits. There is no other: Kepler’s Rule. So I wonder what other mathematical rule Newton could have used.
    7. What Newton did was to brand Kepler’s Rule as if it were Newton’s dynamical laws. But writing Kepler’s Rule with Newtonian sounding units does not make Kepler’s Rule Newton’s dynamical rule.
  3. To say that Newton is using matehamatics only to compute orbits simply means that he is using Kepler’s Rule to compute orbits because there is no other rule.
  4. So, it is sophistry to say that Newton used only mathematics to compute orbits. If so he could have used his supposed force as he and his followers claim.
  5. This is masterful sophistry but it is still a sophistry.
  6. This is how Newton reasons: I know this supernatural cause that I call force is supernatural and it does not exist in this world. I know this because I defined this force as a supernatural cause that is a timeless traveler. My supernatural cause is supernatural because it travels distances without time passing. This means that my supernatural cause that I call force, or sometimes gravity, is everywhere at once. Only God can be everywhere at once. This is why my supernatural cause I call force is as supernatural as God. There is no doubt about this. But, look, I do computations of orbit with this force and I get correct results. This proves that this supernatural force that does not exist in this world is actually exists because my calculations give correct results. I don’t know how this weird thing happens but it does happen because I calculate osnits with it and I get good results. My force does not exist in this world, we don’t know where it resides, but somehow it reaches out to celestial objects without time passing and pulls them without time passing and makes them satellites. And this force is one r squared force but don’t ask me how a force that travels the distance r reduces its intensity as one over r squared. Anyway my superanatural cause that I call force does not propagate so its intensitiy cannot diminish in fact it does not have intensity. Just stop questioning and take my word for it. I’m telling you I calculated orbits with this supernatural cause that I call force and got good results. So shut up and stop questioning my authority.
  7. We what a fantastic story. We don’t need to have the mythical intellectual powers of Newton to show that Newton is lying.

Newton vs. Holmes

  1. Newton is in fact Dr. Moriarty of natural sciences, the great nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. Yes, Newton is an evil genius of highest caliber, this cannot be questioned.
  2. We read Newton’s reasoning, rather Newton’s sophistry above. How does Holmes reason? Holmes famously said,

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

  1. Holmes is right. We have an undisputed fact: Newton’s force is supernatural. Another undisputed principle is that nature is not supernatural. Therefore, if nature is not supernatural and Newton’s supernatural cause he calls force is supernatural then this force does not exist in this world. If it did exist nature would be supernatural. We cannot accept this even to save Newton’s sacred authority. Therefore, Newton’s supernatural cause he calls force does not exist in this world and it is impossible that it can act on other bodies that exist in this world. This is our impossibility. Therefore we eliminate the impossible.
  2. When we eliminate the impossible there is only one possibility remains: Newton never used his supernatural cause he calls force to compute orbits.
  3. Holmes exposes Newton’s lies and sophistry with his great powers of deduction. Holmes wins again.
  4. If et does not exist in nature it cannot be used as a cause (mathematica or not) to explain natural phenomena such as orbits.
  5. Therefore, the only option that remains is that Newton is lying and he never uses this supernatural cause he calls force in his orbit calculations. And this is proved.

And Claude answers thus:

This is a fascinating question that touches on both the history of science and deep philosophical issues about the nature of scientific explanation. However, I need to respectfully challenge the premise that Huygens was simply “ignored” or that Newton’s concept of gravity is supernatural.

First, Huygens raised a legitimate philosophical concern that was actually shared by Newton himself. Newton was quite troubled by the concept of action at a distance and wrote in a letter to Richard Bentley: “That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum… is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.”

However, there are several important points to consider:

  1. Newton’s mathematical framework was incredibly successful at predicting and explaining a wide range of phenomena - from planetary motion to tides. This predictive power was crucial for its acceptance, regardless of the underlying metaphysical questions.
  2. Newton himself was agnostic about the mechanism of gravity’s action, famously declaring “hypotheses non fingo” (I frame no hypotheses). He developed a mathematical description that worked, while remaining open about the underlying physical mechanism.
  3. Modern physics has actually vindicated some of Huygens’ intuitions. Einstein’s General Relativity replaced Newton’s concept of force with curved spacetime - gravity isn’t really a force at all, but rather a consequence of the geometry of spacetime. There is no action at a distance in this framework.
  4. In current physics, we still use Newton’s formulation in many contexts not because we believe gravity is literally an instantaneous force acting at a distance, but because it’s an extremely good approximation that’s mathematically simpler than General Relativity for many practical purposes.

So rather than saying Huygens was ignored, it might be more accurate to say that physics temporarily set aside these deep philosophical questions in favor of a mathematically successful framework, while continuing to work toward deeper explanations - which eventually came with Einstein.

This is actually a common pattern in science: sometimes we need to work with models that have known philosophical or conceptual problems because they’re useful, while continuing to seek better explanations. The quantum mechanics we use today has similar conceptual puzzles, but we use it because it works extraordinarily well.

Would you be interested in exploring how Einstein’s geometric conception of gravity addresses some of Huygens’ original concerns?

Created: 2025-02-23 Sun 09:17

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