$Unique_ID{how00714}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Civilizations Past And Present
Document: Newton, Rule III Of Reasoning}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Wallbank;Taylor;Bailkey;Jewsbury;Lewis;Hackett}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{bodies
experiments
divided
hardness
inertia
particles
toward

}
$Date{1992}
$Log{}
Title:       Civilizations Past And Present
Book:        Chapter 20: The European Dream Of Progress And Enlightenment
Author:      Wallbank;Taylor;Bailkey;Jewsbury;Lewis;Hackett
Date:        1992

Document: Newton, Rule III Of Reasoning

This selection, from Book III of the Principia, illustrates Newton's
conception of universal gravity.

                              RULE III
     The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor
     remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies
     within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the
     universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

          For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by
     experiments, we are to hold for univeral all such as universally agree
     with experiments, and such as are not liable to diminution can never be
     quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of
     experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own
     devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which is wont
     to be simple and always consonant to itself. We in no other way know the
     extension of bodies than by our senses, nor do these reach it in all
     bodies; but because we perceive extension in all that are sensible,
     therefore we ascribe it universally to all others also. That abundance
     of bodies are hard we learn by experience; and because the hardness of
     the whole arises from the hardness of the parts, we therefore justly
     infer the hardness of the undivided particles, not only of the bodies we
     feel, but of all others. That all bodies are impenetrable, we gather not
     from reason, but from sensation. The bodies which we handle we find
     impenetrable, and thence conclude impenetrability to be a universal
     property of all bodies whatsoever. That all bodies are movable and
     endowed with certain powers (which we call the inertia) of persevering
     in their motion, or in their rest, we only infer from the like
     properties observed in the bodies which we have seen. The extension,
     hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and inertia of the whole result
     from the extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility and inertia of
     the parts; and hence we conclude the least particles of all bodies to be
     also all extended, and hard and impenetrable, and movable, and endowed
     with their proper inertia. And this is the foundation of all philosophy.
     Moreover, that the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be
     separated from one another is a matter of observation; and, in the
     particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet
     lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated. But whether the parts
     so distinguished and not yet divided may, by the powers of Nature, be
     actually divided and separated from one another we cannot certainly
     determine. Yet had we the proof of but one experiment that any undivided
     particle, in breaking a hard and solid body, suffered a division, we
     might by virtue of this rule conclude that the undivided as well as the
     divided particles may be divided and actually separated to infinity.

          Lastly, if it universally appears, by experiments and astronomical
     observations, that all bodies about the earth gravitate toward the
     earth, and that in proportion to the quantity of matter which they
     severally contain; that the moon likewise, according to the quantity of
     its matter, gravitates toward the earth; that, on the other hand, our
     sea gravitates toward the moon; and all the planets one toward another;
     and the comets in like manner toward the sun: we must, in consequence
     of this rule, universally allow that all bodies whatsoever are endowed
     with a principle of mutual gravitation. For the argument from the
     appearances concludes with more force for the universal gravitation of
     all bodies than for their impenetrability, of which, among those in the
     celestial regions, we have no experiments nor any manner of observation.
     Not that I affirm gravity to be essential to bodies; by their vis insita
     I mean nothing but their inertia. This is immutable. Their gravity is
     diminished as they recede from the earth.

Source: H. S. Thayer and John H. Randall, eds., Newton's Philosophy of Nature
(New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1953), pp. 3-5.