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Newton’s zeroth law

God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable movable particles.

(Isaac Newton, Optics, 1704, Book III, page: 375)

  1. Newton does not clearly and explicitly state this in the Principia but Newton is an atomist and materialist.
  2. Of course, this is implicit in his “mutual attraction” scheme because Newton’s mutual attractions occur between each and every indivisible unit that make up the world.
  3. Newton claims that God created a particulate universe. This is the fundamental assumption of Newtonian worldview.
  4. I call this Newton’s Zeroth law because this assumption comes before all others:

God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable movable particles.

Assumption of indivisible units called matter

  1. Matter is assumed without any justification.
  2. What is matter in this sentence? We don’t know.
  3. The rest of the sentence appears to describe what matter is.
  4. Matter is the name of these indivisible units that make up the world.
  5. There are indivisible units and these indivisible units are called “matter”.

Indivisible units are solid

  1. It seems that Newton is repeating the same property with different names.
  2. What is the difference between “solid” and “hard”? There is no difference.

Properties of matter

  1. Matter, that is, the indivisible units that make up the world, are
    1. solid,
    2. massy,
    3. hard and
    4. impenetrable,
  2. Newton’s God seems to be a very verbose creator. “Solid”, “hard” and “impenetrable” simply means that they are indivisible. And absolutely indivisible by definition.
  3. These indivisible units also have a property of being “massy”.
    1. This means that Newton’s God created a Newtonian universe since mass is a concept made up by Newton.
    2. Mass is a requirement in the Newtonian world and God created a world that conforms to the Newtonian world. At least this is what Newton tells us. Believe Newton at your own peril.
  4. Massy means that these indivisible units have mass.
    1. What is mass?
    2. In Newton mass is a name for “quantity of matter”.
    3. And quantity of matter is the number of these indivisible units in a given volume.
    4. In Newton mass is also alive and intelligent since it is the source of the Newtonian supernatural and intelligent cause known with its euphemistic name “force”.
  5. The most important property of these units is that they are movable.
    1. Of course these indivisible units are set in motion by Newtonian forces. And Newtonian force is a supernatural cause which is hidden under many euphemisms such as “force” and “gravity”.
  6. I don’t think an object which is absolutely hard can move.

It looks like this simple sentence reveals the entire Newtonian world scheme.

Created: 2025-02-12 Wed 14:30

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