A Comment on Solari and Natiello’s Constructivist View of Newton’s Mechanics

Abstract

The present comment on Solari and Natiello's paper (Found. Sci. 2019) values their constructivist approach to Newtonian Mechanics. My critical point concerns only the link between the concept of force and phenomena. It will be shown that the idealised form of the law of inertia created by the authors avoids criticism of the law and that this law (idealised or not) leads to the concept of force as the cause of acceleration. This concept appears in the authors' reconstruction as an assumption. They add that this assumption must be contrasted with experiments. Following this, I address an experiment, in which the force that is taken as the cause of acceleration, is not present in the phenomenon at stake. As it thus does not satisfy the property of locality, which any cause has to, force cannot be a cause. Keywords Law of inertia • Force • Cause • Foundations of mechanicsSolari and Natiello (2019) address Newton's Mechanics as it is presented nowadays in physics textbooks. Their point of view is, however, radically different from any textbook approach. The idea that Newton's genius discovered three laws of nature, is replaced by the idea that 'there are no laws of Nature but rather laws for the understanding of Nature' (Solari and Natiello 2019, p. 320). The authors go through the important topics of mechanics-time, space, law of inertia, force-but also speed of light, which has been related with the relativity theory. My comment on their paper focuses on two points: law of inertia and force.