Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/23

 supplied one example of such a particular law in his great law of gravitation, which depended upon mutual distances.

Newton’s methodology for physics was an overwhelming success. But the forces which he introduced left Nature still without meaning or value. intheessence ofamaterial body — in its mass, motion, and shape — there was no reason for the law of gravitation, Even if the particular forces could be conceived as the accidents of a cosmic epoch, there was no reason in the Newtonian concepts of mass and motion why material bodies should be connected by any stress between therm. Yet the notion of stresses, as essential connections between bodies, was a fundamental factor in the Newtonian concept of Nature, What Newton ieft for empirical investigation was the determination of the particular stresses now existing, In this determination he made a magnificent beginning by isolating the stresses indicated