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Rethinking Newton’s Principia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Simon Saunders
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Abstract

It is widely accepted that the notion of an inertial frame is central to Newtonian mechanics and that the correct space-time structure underlying Newton’s methods in Principia is neo-Newtonian or Galilean space-time. I argue to the contrary that inertial frames are not needed in Newton’s theory of motion, and that the right space-time structure for Newton’s Principia requires the notion of parallelism of spatial directions at different times and nothing more.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 22 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

My thanks for encouragement, corrections, and criticisms to Julian Barbour, Harvey Brown, Oliver Pooley, Robert DiSalle, George Smith, and David Wallace. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Julian: in conversations and writings he has long influenced my thinking on space-time matters.

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