Alex O'Connor

That is how much weaker the force of gravity is.

So if something is two times further away, it's four times less attractive.

And he does all of this, and it's brilliant in the Principia Mathematica.

But then there remains this question, like why?

Not how do objects fall to the ground, not what mathematical rules do they sort of do it by, but why do they fall to the ground?

And in the Scolium, which is like an addendum to the Principia Mathematica, where Newton published these findings, he answers this explicitly.

You can read this online.

He says, like, as to what gravity actually is...

As to why this stuff is happening, he writes hypothesis non fingo.

It's in Latin.

It means I frame no hypothesis.

He doesn't know.

And he says it's also not the kind of question that science should be engaged in because it can't answer that kind of question.

In other words, Newton has described brilliantly

planets, orbits, objects falling to the ground, this force which he calls gravity.

And he just... It's sort of a placeholder.

It's like the word gravity is just a word for whatever is the thing that's making this happen.

But he doesn't know what's making it happen.

And it's so funny to me when people like...

look into the past and they say, how silly are the beliefs that people used to have?