We've Been Misreading a Major Law of Physics For Almost 300 Years

We've Been Misreading a Major Law of Physics For Almost 300 Years

When Isaac Newton inscribed onto parchment his now-famed laws of motion in 1687, he could have only hoped we'd be discussing them three centuries later.

The Newtonian physics we learned in school may not be exactly what Newton had in mind: a thorough analysis of the original texts has revealed a “little,” so to speak, translation error that has spanned the centuries, influencing the way we interpret the motion of objects in the universe. Newtonian physics, the discovery that changes everything Daniel Hoek, a philosopher of language and mathematics at Virginia Tech, has made a surprising discover…