¶ Mass Attraction
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Index Entry
Mass Attraction:
“Nothing could be more fundamental to all of science than the phenomenon ‘mass attraction,’ which Newton was able to formalize. For instance we hang two masses or spheres from the ceiling and measure the distance between the centers of gravity of them spheres. We find that they are closer together not only from the points where they were hung, which could be accounted for just by the fact that we are on a sphere and the radii of a sphere are divergent, but they are closer than that. If you move one of them halfway toward the other and measure the distance between the centers of gravity, you will find that it has moved in much closer. If you keep moving in progressively, halving the distances, you discover as Newton did, that the relative attraction is in terms of the cesond power of the relative proximity. When you halve the distance between the two spheres you do not double the attraction; you forfold it. So as you get in very close, as atoms are close to one another, you begin to have things with very extraordinary kinds of coherences.”
¶ Citations
- RBF Address to National Conference for Philosophy of Creativity at SIU, Carbondale, Ill., 16 Oct. '69 - p. 9.
