Critical Discussion of Andrew Janiak’s “Newton and the Reality.docVIP

“Gravity as a relational quality of matter in Newton’s Treatise:” I: Introduction Thesis In this paper I clarify what Newton could have meant when he insisted that gravity is a real force. I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental quality of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the Principia in the mid 1680s, he thought that (at least a part of) the cause of gravity is the disposition inherent in any individual body, but that the force of gravity is the actu