Of course, people will believe the law only if it does not openly contradicts some other observations (or their belief). Anybody can one wake up one day a declare a new natural law. It used to work somehow like this: I observe something and I have a given framework of ideas (a belief, a religion, etc.), I match the two things together and voila'. Well, it's a difficult question which would require a very long and accurate answer, so I will just try to throw some ideas.įirst of all, "physical" (in the senso of "related to nature") laws have been around for centuries - except many where wrong. Newton's theory would not be directly tested experimentally (and $G$ measured) until much later, more than 70 years after Newton's death.
#Isaac newton gravity full
There's some historical controversy over who exactly did what first, but at any rate Newton was the first to publish the theory in its full form.Īt that point, it would hardly be considered a law the same way it would today. The observation of Kepler's laws predated Newton, so it remained only to be shown that an inverse square law in gravity gives Kepler orbits, and that extended masses such as planets could reasonably be treated as point particles to posit the full law of gravity. If they're good, then we have a useful theory.Īs far as Newton's law of gravity is concerned, the motivation for it came a combination of noting that free fall times did not depend on mass (which implies the $Mm$ part) and astronomical observations. The goal is not just to explain what we've already seen, but predict things we haven't tried yet. Posits a theory that would explain the phenomenon, and makes additional testable predictions.
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