rationalskepticism.org

trubble76 wrote:Intelligent Falling Theory is gaining ground. You can't prove that a god isn't holding stuff down.

hackenslash wrote:

Sonoran Lion wrote:I am having a hard time finding information on whether or not a theory called the "theory of gravity" ever existed. I do know that gravity is explained using the theory of relativity currently. But before the theory of relativity, was there another theory of gravity? I think a misunderstanding I am having is that Newton's findings are referred to as Newton's Laws of Universal Gravitation. Thanks for any help. I ask this because someone I was having a discussion with believes a theory of gravity never existed, only laws of gravity.

As others have pointed out, this is a semantic issue, but it's actually that the theory of gravitation and the law gravitation are two different things. A theory is a framework dealing with a class of facts of specific interest. A law is a mathematical description of a behaviour.

So, Newton's theory of Gravitation (which did not explain what gravity was; he left that to others) was the framework dealing with all observations, both extant and predicted, pertaining to the operation of gravity, while Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is the equation that shows the relationships between two bodies mutually attracted under gravity, namely this one:



Which can be expressed in plain language as 'every point mass in the universe attracts every other point mass with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.' (yoinked from wiki)