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| Science & Technology |
| Newton's First Law Was Misunderstood for 300 Years Due to a Translation Error |
| 2024-10-31 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. [Regnum] The first law of English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton has been misinterpreted for over 300 years due to an error in translation from Latin. This is the opinion expressed by philologist Daniel Hook in an article published in the journal Philosophy of Science. Newton formulated three laws of motion in his seminal work, Principia Mathematica, published in 1687. As Hook pointed out, the most common formulation is: "A body remains at rest, or moves uniformly, unless acted upon by external force." The mistake is the mistranslation of the conjunction "nisi quatenus," which was incorrectly translated as "if," and which actually limits the extent to which a body's state of motion can change as forces act upon it. "A strict interpretation of the first law has never been formulated or defended in print. Simplified interpretations have been unequivocally approved by many historians, physicists and philosophers... It is worth clarifying the situation by clearly formulating convincing arguments and providing evidence in their favor," the article says. According to Hook, Newton's first law, as formulated by the English physicist and mathematician, describes a more general principle that limits the motion of all bodies. In the article, the philologist, to simplify the narrative, called the above formulation the variable W1, and the formulation that sounds like “Every change in the state of a body performing uniform rectilinear motion is caused by forces acting on this body” — the variable S1. Hook insists that the formulation S1 is a stronger and more correct reading. He explained that according to W1, a body maintains its momentum if no forces act on it, while S1 states that every change in the momentum of a body is due to the forces acting on it. Thus, W1 is included in the domain of S1. The difference between the formulations is that S1 fixes a limitation on the degree to which bodies can change their state of motion, while W1 ignores this point. At the same time, Hook emphasized that the two formulations are not contradictory. As reported by the Regnum news agency, in 2023 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for experimental methods that produce "attosecond light pulses to study the motion of electrons in matter." The laureates of the prize were the French-American scientist Pierre Agostini, the Hungarian-Austrian researcher Ferenc Krauz, and the representative of France Anne L'Huillier. Related: Isaac Newton 05/28/2022 A New Enlightenment is Coming Isaac Newton 07/20/2020 Brace for the Backlash Isaac Newton 01/07/2019 Indian scientists slam ancient Hindu ‘stem cell’ claim |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #6 The nature of the body's "compulsion" remains unspecified. Come on, man! We all have our urges. Since we know that math is racist, this implies that Physics is merely a tool of Western imperialists seeking to colonize the space-time continuum. Or should that be "Western empiricists"? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2024-10-31 14:24 |
| #5 And how does this affect Terminal Ballistics? |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-10-31 13:29 |
| #4 <nitpick> The first law only says dp/dt=f(F), f(0)=0. The nature of the body's "compulsion" remains unspecified. The second law precisely describes the force's action as dp/dt=F. </nitpick> |
| Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 2024-10-31 11:46 |
| #3 The S1 statement is the same as dp/dt = F, which is the usual way to state the first law in upper level physics. |
| Posted by: KBK 2024-10-31 11:19 |
| #2 I admit to being confused, (Statics and Dynamics was 60 years ago) and not really sure I care. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2024-10-31 09:17 |
| #1 Fortunately, old Isaac provided us with a math description of the principle. |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-10-31 02:05 |