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By Robert Garland Colodny
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Even a cursory inspection of the way in which we actually use many of our laws reveals this. Whether in fact we can ascribe unique roles to each of our various physical laws and still have a useful conceptual scheme is another and important question. But it is not the question of logical status. It is the question of whether it is possible to achieve a rational reconstruction of physics in which each law has a simple and easily characterizable logical status. But how can a law be both an empirical proposition relating force, mass, and acceleration and, say, a definition of a scale of force?
If we are attempting a rational reconstruction of mechanics, then the received account may be satisfactory. But if we are The Origin and Nature of Newton’s Laws of Motion 53 attempting to describe the actual role of Newton’s second law in physical science, then it will be seen that this account is highly misleading. And our purpose here is the latter, for a description of the logical status of a law is here understood to be simply a generalized description of its role in physi cal science. It will therefore be argued that the received account of the logical status of Newton’s second law of motion is unsatisfactory.
Emphasis added. 16. M. Jammer, Concepts of Force (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 124. 17. Principia, p. 13. Emphasis added. 18. , p. 14. Emphasis added. 19. , p. 21. Emphasis added. 20. , p. 2. 21. It was a universally received doctrine that forces are conserved, and hence that they are in some sense equal to the effects they produce. The only point of disagreement concerned the true measure of force. The Cartesians measured force by the product of mass and velocity, the Leibnizians by the prod uct of mass and velocity squared {vis viva).