Infinity and Newton’s Three Laws of Motion

Foundations of Physics 41 (12):1810-1828 (2011)
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Abstract

It is shown that the following three common understandings of Newton’s laws of motion do not hold for systems of infinitely many components. First, Newton’s third law, or the law of action and reaction, is universally believed to imply that the total sum of internal forces in a system is always zero. Several examples are presented to show that this belief fails to hold for infinite systems. Second, two of these examples are of an infinitely divisible continuous body with finite mass and volume such that the sum of all the internal forces in the body is not zero and the body accelerates due to this non-null net internal force. So the two examples also demonstrate the breakdown of the common understanding that according to Newton’s laws a body under no external force does not accelerate. Finally, these examples also make it clear that the expression ‘impressed force’ in Newton’s formulations of his first and second laws should be understood not as ‘external force’ but as ‘exerted force’ which is the sum of all the internal and external forces acting on a given body, if the body is infinitely divisible

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Chunghyoung Lee
Pohang University of Science and Technology

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Unmoved movers: a very simple and novel form of indeterminism.Jon Pérez Laraudogoitia - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (3):1-23.

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References found in this work

Causation as folk science.John D. Norton - 2007 - In Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press.
Causation as folk science.John Norton - 2003 - Philosophers' Imprint 3:1-22.
A beautiful supertask.Jon Perez Laraudogoitia - 1996 - Mind 105 (417):81-83.
Losing energy in classical, relativistic and quantum mechanics.David Atkinson - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (1):170-180.

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