...tendency: "You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to Matter," he wrote to Bentley. "Pray do not ascribe that Notion to me; for the Cause...therefore would take more Time to consider of it." But ignorance of the cause is not to deny the effect. "To us it is enough" — so he says in the General...

...in a letter of 1692-3 to Richard Bentley, who was then preparing the first Boyle Lectures, he wrote: "You sometimes speak of Gravity as essential and inherent...therefore would take more Time to consider of it." 55 Considerable time was taken to think about it, but as late as 1713, when the second edition of the...

...the frame of this Systeme to an intelligent Agent. You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and 25 inherent to matter. Pray, do not ascribe that notion...therefore would take more time to consider of it. I fear what I have said of infinities will seem so obscure to you ; but it is enough if you understand,...

...could not contain the ultimate cause of natural forces. One remembers his cri de c&ur to Bentley : ' You sometimes speak of Gravity as essential and inherent...to Matter. Pray do not ascribe that Notion to me. . ..' From this peril the aetherial hypothesis, the concept of force as mass multiplied by acceleration,...

...into obscure and uncertain speculations" (ibid.). Newton writes (see Newton's Philosophy of Nature): "You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent...cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know" (p. 53). "I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena,...

...described how the attraction between two bodies occurs but does not explain why. On one occasion he wrote, "You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent...know, and therefore would take more time to consider it."16 Newton's law of universal gravitation provided a mathematical explanation without having to...

...ascribe that notion to ie"; although he often, as here, siiply postpones the question of its cause ("for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know and therefore would take lore tiie to consider it"). In fact, the question whether Newton did or did not deprive latter of all...

...investigation. Newton's first re278 nark to Bentley on this subject was: "The Cause of Gravity is what I do lot pretend to know, and therefore would take more Time to consider of t." When, later, he declared the inconceivability of "inanimate brute Matter" acting at a distance...

...lived, we would have known something! [Newton, in a letter to Dr Bentley of 17 January 1692/93, wrote: "You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent...know and therefore would take more time to consider it." In Newton's Philosophy of Nature, ed. by HS Thayer (New York: In the very preface to his famous...

...his literalist, nonmathematical interpretation of the Principia's definitions. Newton urges caution: You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent...that notion to me, for the cause of gravity is what 1 do not pretend to know and therefore would take more time to consider it. (Thayer 1953, p. 53) John...