Did Netwton actually think "gravity " was "absurd"?

[zanick]

TL;DR

In one of Newtons famous letters to Richard Bentley he talks about gravity as if it is "absurd".. is it the way in which he is speaking or referencing the letters sent to him by Bentley, or does he really think gravity is an "absurd concept?

http://www.google.it.ao/books?id=4q...=editions:ISBN0803974612&lr=&output=html_text

The last clause of the second position I like very well. It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must be, if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers.​

 

[PhanthomJay]

Newton was a genius of his time. He treated gravity as an attractive force between 2 objects , but found it absurd that two masses could attract each other and produce a non-contact force acting at a distance through space. That’s why he said gravity must be something else other than an attractive force at a distance( As if acting like a magnet.).

. Well he was right, proven later by the other genius, Einstein, that gravity is really spacetime curvature in the presence of mass and energy. Newton’s formulas however give extremely good results for non-relativistic cases.

 

[zanick]

thanks for the reply... so, since he got it before Einstein, it doesn't take away from there being a force, or "non force", but the cause was left to be discovered.

 

[PhanthomJay]

Yes, but until a quantum of theory of gravity is discovered, the book is still open. The great late Stephen Hawking, a strong proponent of M-Theory, treated Gravity like a God (see his book , “ The Grand Design”).