 | Ernst Mach - Mechanics - 1915 - 134 pages
...escape him. He could not think of renouncing its help. But the law of inertia, referred in such a naKve way to the earth supposed to be at rest, could not...altered thereby ; only the initial positions and initial velocities—the constants of integration—may alter. By this view Newton gave the exact meaning of... | |
 | Nick Huggett - Philosophy - 1999 - 292 pages
...to have a generally valid system of reference, Newton ventured the fifth corollary of the Principia. He imagined a momentary terrestrial system of coordinates,...stars. Indeed he could, without interfering with its usability, impart to this system any initial position and any uniform translation relatively to the... | |
 | Barry Bruce - Biography & Autobiography - 2003 - 108 pages
...I was struck, as was Mach, by Newton's use of the term "fixed stars" in relation to this issue. ... Now in order to have a generally valid system of reference,...without any rotation relatively to the fixed stars. (Mach 1960, p. 285) The effects which distinguish absolute from relative motion are, the forces of... | |
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Galileo's happy discovery could only hold approximately for small times and spaces, during which the rotation did not come into question. Instead of that, Newton's conclusions about planetary motion, referred as they were to the fixed stars, appeared... 