Page:ScienceAndHypothesis1905.djvu/144

112 It is clear that the attempt has failed. The obstacle which prevented us from proving the law of acceleration is that we have no definition of force. This obstacle subsists in its entirety, since the principle invoked has not furnished us with the missing definition. The principle of relative motion is none the less very interesting, and deserves to be considered for its own sake. Let us try to enunciate it in an accurate manner. We have said above that the accelerations of the different bodies which form part of an isolated system only depend on their velocities and their relative positions, and not on their velocities and their absolute positions, provided that the movable axes to which the relative motion is referred move uniformly in a straight line; or, if it is preferred, their accelerations depend only on the differences of their velocities and the differences of their co-ordinates, and not on the absolute values of these velocities and co-ordinates. If this principle is true for relative accelerations, or rather for differences of acceleration, by combining it with the law of reaction we shall deduce that it is true for absolute accelerations. It remains to be seen how we can prove that differences of acceleration depend only on differences of velocities and co-ordinates; or, to speak in mathematical language, that these differences of co-ordinates satisfy differential equations of the second order. Can this proof be deduced from experiment or from à priori conditions? Remembering what we