Inertia, the Innate Force of Matter: A Legacy from Newton to Modern Physics

Abstract

For many scholars, the publishing of Isaac Newton’s Principia in 1687 marks the beginning of a period of physics which they call the classical one.1 Yet it is questionable whether Newton’s “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”2 actually represent what is known as physics today. The Principia is a foundation for a mathematical philosophy of nature as viewed by Plato. If Physics is within the scope of this philosophy, then it also includes metaphysics, as a presupposed knowledge of the absolute, of space and time, of matter, force and motion, of cause and effect; read the Scholium that follows the eight definitions introduced at the beginning of the Principia.3That is why physicists of the positivistic school of thought have had their problems with Newton since the time of George Berkeley and Ernst Mach,4 and why, as a result, many people are more familiar with the title than with the contents of the Principia.