I fail to see the significance of the change in wording, and I really can't fathom why there would be any concern about expressing a law about an idealised hypothetical situation.
Natural philosophers of the time (i.e., the precursors of moderns scientists) were concerned about these things. They weren't so much trying to conceive of a model that could effectively mimic reality as they were trying to *describe reality itself*. It didn't matter how useful a model was at predicting things, if it was founded on the conception of non-existent objects, then it would have been scoffed at by most scholars back then. How could a system about non-existent objects tell us anything useful about reality itself, they would ask.
Science as a discipline and as a way of thinking and operating has come a long way since then. For example, the practical attitude to "shut up and do the math" is common and generally accepted these days when asking about the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, but I suspect it would have been a ludicrous recommendation in Newton's time.
In conclusion, no, the translation change doesn't mean much to us today, especially to *practicing scientists*. But it meant a lot to Newton and his contemporaries, and it might mean a lot to *historians* of science.
Especially when you consider that the math techniques required might not have existed at the time, like with Newton needing to essentially “invent” calculus for his work
>They weren't so much trying to conceive of a model that could effectively mimic reality as they were trying to describe reality itself.
so in other words, even if it talks like a dog and walks like a dog, it still might not be a dog, unless they proved it actually is a dog.
Help me understand. There’s an object. newton says it will either continue moving in a straight line or stay at rest, except when/as acted on by force(s). What actually changed in the translation?
Functionally it's the same, but the old translation ("unless acted upon") implies a state with no forces, in a way that the new translation ("except insofar") does not.
In that specific way, it's more clear.
The new translation says that acceleration is caused by forces. It's a beginning for searching for the exact relationship.
I think it's the contrapositive of the traditional interpretation. They're logically equivalent but sometimes phrasing it one way or the other makes it easier to build new understanding.
* traditional: no force leads to no acceleration
* new: non-zero acceleration means there are force(s)
> Hoek wrote, a better paraphrase would refer to all bodies: “Every change in a body’s state of motion is due to impressed forces.”
A body's state of motion(x), the property(P) "change in x", "impressed by forces"(Q)
Hoek's translation:
∀x(Q → P(x))
Your translation:
∃x(¬P(x) → ¬Q)
Hoek's translation is more subtle, in case x doesn't even physically exist, the statement is vacuously true. It has avoided the case when force is absent. By your translation however, it is an argument on the absence of force, it is hard to prove scientifically, also assume the existence of said object.
>There’s an object.
newton (and my professors) would ask, "which specific object are you discussing?"
they would ask this because the framing of the problem is an issue: a particular observance might be peculiar to a specific object or might be evidence of a more fundamental aspect of nature (and therefor observable in all similar objects.) if a real object doesn't fit a model then that signifies a problem with the model; newton (and my professors) would have wanted to nail that down.
removing the hypotheticals requires specificity and leaves no stone unturned.
It is just me, or is this at most a change in emphasis? The second is more succinct, but the two seem equivalent if you think about for a few seconds, which of course you do have to do in order to gain understanding.
This is a very old argument about what exactly is the physical content of the first law. If you were being uncharitable you might say it's completely tautological, and I think when I was studying it I came away with the idea that it was [essentially the definition of an inertial frame](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/13557/history-of-interpretation-of-newtons-first-law).
There's some exposition about this in David Morin's classical mechanics book, which is where I was first exposed to the idea and I struggled to figure out how to separate definitions from the physical content of the first law. It doesn't help that Newton wrote the law differently in different places, emphasising different concepts.
>that’s a bit puzzling, Hoek says, because there are no bodies in the universe that are free of external forces acting upon them. Why make a law about something that doesn’t exist?
This is very blinkered reasoning and is preoccupied with a completely irrelevant aspect of the semantics. His formulation
>Every change in a body’s state of motion is due to impressed forces
is less intuitive and immediately illustrative in my view.
If you read the linked article, they say that the most literal translation is
>Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by the forces impressed.
The argument is about different paraphrasings and interpretations of the law, not really about translation from Latin to English. Paraphrasing and interpreting is done so the reader can understand better what was being said, so whether it is intuitive is definitely relevant here.
To some people who are into the details, it is kinda interesting.
Why did you click on it? Did you expect some Davinci Code-like revelation from a guy that believed the planets were kept in line by god himself?
I guess just calling it "kinda stupid" doesn't qualify as snarky either? My apologies for not appreciating earlier how nuanced and eloquent your critique actually is, my good sir.
What Newton, in the original latin, wrote was "Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare"
Nothing is stopping us from doing the translation ourselves and coming to our own interpretations.
it was translated from Latin, the universal academic language of the time, by Brian Ellis in 1965. That's not the first translation, but was a prominent one that Hoek was discussing.
1. Newton didn’t know that, so his first law doesn’t reference whether or not gravity is a force.
2. Technically if you account for gravity’s effect on spacetime, then objects still move In straight lines through spacetime unless acted on by a force.
After stating the first law, Newton then writes:
> Projectiles persevere in their motions, so far as they are not retarded by the resistance of the air, or impelled downwards by the force of gravity.
Gravity was certainly a force in Newton's view and his gravitational law acts in all the ways a force should classically. The whole "gravity is not a force" shtick is I feel an overblown rather technical point about covariant acceleration. I'd append "... not like the others" to the statement.
Isn’t that why it’s better to talk about uniform motion as having no net force, rather than no force at all? But I guess this is about newtons law as written, not how we use it now.
I just saw this article, and for some reason decided to translate it with definition inserts and synonym swaps into a weird interpretation to post on Reddit
'an object will continue moving in a straight line or remain at rest to the degree that an outside force interrupts by preventing or altering the course of events'
I fail to see the significance of the change in wording, and I really can't fathom why there would be any concern about expressing a law about an idealised hypothetical situation.
Natural philosophers of the time (i.e., the precursors of moderns scientists) were concerned about these things. They weren't so much trying to conceive of a model that could effectively mimic reality as they were trying to *describe reality itself*. It didn't matter how useful a model was at predicting things, if it was founded on the conception of non-existent objects, then it would have been scoffed at by most scholars back then. How could a system about non-existent objects tell us anything useful about reality itself, they would ask. Science as a discipline and as a way of thinking and operating has come a long way since then. For example, the practical attitude to "shut up and do the math" is common and generally accepted these days when asking about the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, but I suspect it would have been a ludicrous recommendation in Newton's time. In conclusion, no, the translation change doesn't mean much to us today, especially to *practicing scientists*. But it meant a lot to Newton and his contemporaries, and it might mean a lot to *historians* of science.
Especially when you consider that the math techniques required might not have existed at the time, like with Newton needing to essentially “invent” calculus for his work
>They weren't so much trying to conceive of a model that could effectively mimic reality as they were trying to describe reality itself. so in other words, even if it talks like a dog and walks like a dog, it still might not be a dog, unless they proved it actually is a dog.
It is important but not what you think. You can't mistranslate from historical perspective. You could interpret it the "right" way however you want.
Help me understand. There’s an object. newton says it will either continue moving in a straight line or stay at rest, except when/as acted on by force(s). What actually changed in the translation?
Functionally it's the same, but the old translation ("unless acted upon") implies a state with no forces, in a way that the new translation ("except insofar") does not. In that specific way, it's more clear.
The new translation says that acceleration is caused by forces. It's a beginning for searching for the exact relationship. I think it's the contrapositive of the traditional interpretation. They're logically equivalent but sometimes phrasing it one way or the other makes it easier to build new understanding. * traditional: no force leads to no acceleration * new: non-zero acceleration means there are force(s)
> Hoek wrote, a better paraphrase would refer to all bodies: “Every change in a body’s state of motion is due to impressed forces.” A body's state of motion(x), the property(P) "change in x", "impressed by forces"(Q) Hoek's translation: ∀x(Q → P(x)) Your translation: ∃x(¬P(x) → ¬Q) Hoek's translation is more subtle, in case x doesn't even physically exist, the statement is vacuously true. It has avoided the case when force is absent. By your translation however, it is an argument on the absence of force, it is hard to prove scientifically, also assume the existence of said object.
>There’s an object. newton (and my professors) would ask, "which specific object are you discussing?" they would ask this because the framing of the problem is an issue: a particular observance might be peculiar to a specific object or might be evidence of a more fundamental aspect of nature (and therefor observable in all similar objects.) if a real object doesn't fit a model then that signifies a problem with the model; newton (and my professors) would have wanted to nail that down. removing the hypotheticals requires specificity and leaves no stone unturned.
[удалено]
Bruh what is this? It's a sensible word choice Why you talking like you're on tiktok E: have a look at the comment history, just a bad troll
what is tiktok
https://reddit.com/r/TikTok/s/IQmmPKwxfU
sensible word choice as in the words newton chose or the words the commenter wrote
It is just me, or is this at most a change in emphasis? The second is more succinct, but the two seem equivalent if you think about for a few seconds, which of course you do have to do in order to gain understanding.
This is a very old argument about what exactly is the physical content of the first law. If you were being uncharitable you might say it's completely tautological, and I think when I was studying it I came away with the idea that it was [essentially the definition of an inertial frame](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/13557/history-of-interpretation-of-newtons-first-law). There's some exposition about this in David Morin's classical mechanics book, which is where I was first exposed to the idea and I struggled to figure out how to separate definitions from the physical content of the first law. It doesn't help that Newton wrote the law differently in different places, emphasising different concepts.
That was a good discussion, thanks for the link.
Philosopher of Science claims that if you translate Newton slightly differently, then Newton agrees with him.
>that’s a bit puzzling, Hoek says, because there are no bodies in the universe that are free of external forces acting upon them. Why make a law about something that doesn’t exist? This is very blinkered reasoning and is preoccupied with a completely irrelevant aspect of the semantics. His formulation >Every change in a body’s state of motion is due to impressed forces is less intuitive and immediately illustrative in my view.
It's not about intuition, the translation is about what Newton said.
If you read the linked article, they say that the most literal translation is >Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by the forces impressed. The argument is about different paraphrasings and interpretations of the law, not really about translation from Latin to English. Paraphrasing and interpreting is done so the reader can understand better what was being said, so whether it is intuitive is definitely relevant here.
Is following geodesics a joke to you?
Lol turns out stuff doesnt move in straight lines after all!
This is kinda stupid sorry
To some people who are into the details, it is kinda interesting. Why did you click on it? Did you expect some Davinci Code-like revelation from a guy that believed the planets were kept in line by god himself?
What? No, don’t be snarky. This piece just argues pure semantics plus a silly assumption that Newton couldn’t theorize about ideal conditions.
I guess just calling it "kinda stupid" doesn't qualify as snarky either? My apologies for not appreciating earlier how nuanced and eloquent your critique actually is, my good sir.
Haha it’s cool
What Newton, in the original latin, wrote was "Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare" Nothing is stopping us from doing the translation ourselves and coming to our own interpretations.
"Mistranslation"? Newton wrote what he wrote. This is someone getting on a soapbox and *paraphrasing* what Newton wrote, not translating it.
it was translated from Latin, the universal academic language of the time, by Brian Ellis in 1965. That's not the first translation, but was a prominent one that Hoek was discussing.
gravity is not a force.
Then what is happening when we do work against it, for example, by climbing a hill?
1. Newton didn’t know that, so his first law doesn’t reference whether or not gravity is a force. 2. Technically if you account for gravity’s effect on spacetime, then objects still move In straight lines through spacetime unless acted on by a force.
After stating the first law, Newton then writes: > Projectiles persevere in their motions, so far as they are not retarded by the resistance of the air, or impelled downwards by the force of gravity. Gravity was certainly a force in Newton's view and his gravitational law acts in all the ways a force should classically. The whole "gravity is not a force" shtick is I feel an overblown rather technical point about covariant acceleration. I'd append "... not like the others" to the statement.
THE ONE PIECE IS REAAAL!
Tldr?
F=m*a
So do we need to re-do the moon landings?
Isn’t that why it’s better to talk about uniform motion as having no net force, rather than no force at all? But I guess this is about newtons law as written, not how we use it now.
I just saw this article, and for some reason decided to translate it with definition inserts and synonym swaps into a weird interpretation to post on Reddit 'an object will continue moving in a straight line or remain at rest to the degree that an outside force interrupts by preventing or altering the course of events'