The connection between Anti-Science and Anti-Education views.

the 'a' term in F=ma is not a constant in the case of gravity because it varies according to the combined masses causing the gravitation.

So you can't just cancel out the mass in the gravity equation without eliminating the effect it has on determining the overall gravitational acceleration.

You have to use the mass of both objects to calculate the gravitational force and only then use the gravitational force to determine the acceleration of the mass at a given level of gravity.

Objects that are lighter and farther away are going to accelerate more gradually than objects that are heavier and/or closer.

Let's talk about how science works.

1) You start with an understanding of how things work.
2) You use your understanding to make predictions.
3) When your understanding doesn't match with experiment you abandon it.
4) Then you create with a new understanding that explains the experiment (as well as things earlier theories could explain).
5) Then you will repeat.

Anti-science is opposite
1) You start with an understanding of how things work.
2) When your understanding doesn't match with experiment, you explain away the experiment or deny the facts.

Science likes clear definitions and precise mathematics. Anti-science wants words, unsupported statements and arguments. In anti-science, pre-concieved ideas are everything. In science facts and experimental observation is everything.

The process of Science mirrors the process of education.

When you go to University to study physics, you are taught to test your own beliefs, and to use experiment and mathematics to see where your understanding is wrong. Human intuition is often proved wrong by science, and I think most scientists love this.

Newton is considered the father of modern Physics, and with good reason. He was the first to put understanding of nature into an elegant testable system of mathematics. But, reading Galileo's dialogues you will see that he understood Newton's first law before Newton did. He also suggests Newton's second law (although his mathematics weren't as clear). When Newton spoke of "standing on the shoulders of giants", he doubtlessly had Galileo in mind.

Newton's laws were triumphant when they successfully predicted the orbits of comets before they were known. The math of Newton worked for every problem presented for centuries.

Of course there came a time when measurements showed differences between the Laws of Newton and how Nature behaved. Most of the time Newton's laws did perfectly well, but explaining that pesky orbit of Mercury, or the failure to find a medium through which light traveled. As Physics advanced and as equipment got more sophisticated it became clear that a new Theory was needed.

Of course, we now have a new theory... which not only explains all of the experiments that Newton could explain, as well as light and the orbit of Mercurly... it made a whole new set of predictions from black holes to time dilation to gravitational lensing which have all been proven by experiment.

And that is how science progresses.

You are doing anti-science.

You are actually correct in the first statement (although I am not sure you know why you are correct). But the a doesn't need to be a constant. You are incorrect in the second statement.

But it doesn't matter. You have started with a pre-conceived notion and you aren't going to give it up no matter what the facts are.

You are mathematically wrong (which I think you are intelligent enough to understand if you weren't desperately holding onto your misunderstanding). Your ideas have been contradicted by experiments, including experiments you could do at home if you chose.

This is anti-science. You have started with a philosophical belief which you will stubbornly hold on to no matter what the facts say.

The 'a' term isn't constant because otherwise the only thing being determined by the entire gravitational equation would be the mass of the falling object.

The 'F' in the gravitational equation represents all the variables in that equation. The 'F' in the F=ma equation represents the force of any accelerating mass. If you cancel out the 'm' in the gravitational equation, it can no longer vary, which means it no longer plays any role in determining the gravitational force. If that would be the case, then there would be no point in having it in that equation to begin with.


First, it wasn't preconceived because I remember hearing it taught in some physics class at some point, but I can't remember exactly when.

Second, it is implicit (i.e. built-into) in the equation that the two masses both affect the strength of gravity AS WELL AS the inverse square of the distance AS WELL AS the gravitational constant. The constant is constant, so you don't need to consider that as an independent variable, but both masses are independent variables, as well as the distance/radius.


The experiments are only relevant in the way that they are relevant. That is where critical thinking is important. I.e. you should be able to figure out that there are empirical observations that are not accurate enough to determine the answer to a given question. E.g. if you wanted to count the number of pollen grains on a flower, you couldn't do so accurately without a microscope. Likewise, if you had an extremely high frame-rate video of Galileo's two cannonballs hitting the ground together, you might notice one landing slightly earlier than the other, which you wouldn't notice in real time. That wouldn't mean there wasn't a difference.

The important thing with the equation, however, is whether you believe that it accurately represents something totally general about gravity. In other words, do you believe that the force actually varies continuously with the two masses and with the inverse square of the distance. If you accept that it is a true description of a continuous/analog (i.e. non-quantized) force, then you assume that gravity can vary continuously between different rates of acceleration (e.g. 9.8001 and 9.8002 or whatever), depending on the independent variables causing the gravitation to vary, i.e. the masses and the distance/radius.


Philosophy is built into math and other aspects of science. All the gravitational equation is, ultimately, is a statement about the relationship between the masses of bodies and the distance between them. The assumption is that there is gravitation between all things, and that the gravitation varies according to the masses of the things and the distance between them.

There is quantitative philosophy in that the equation says these variables are related, but then if you ask how, the answer is that they're not linearly related or by an exponent of 3 or 4, but they are related to the inverse square of the distance. That is a specific quantitative claim about the relationship between the combined mass of the objects and the distance between them.

The Beauty of Newton's Laws is their mathematically simplicity. They ask you to accept very little on faith, there are a couple of axioms (which must be tested by experiment). The rest all works out from the mathematics (which also must be tested by experiment).

Newton's laws explains and predicts how Nature works in a small number of mathematical statements. They are remarkably successful under most circumstances and have been used for everything from baseball, to cars to sending robots to Mars.

Take Newton's second law; F = ma. The anti-science argument is that Force can't mean force and that acceleration can't be a constant. It is hard to read through the anti-science argument.

Newton's second law just says F = ma. This equation can be used in any circumstance. It is a measurable fact that can by experiment.

In real science, you can't just make up rules (as LivingLava keeps doing). Any rule has to be measurable to be backed up by experiment. And an educated Physicist or a good student will be able to explain the experiment for each principle

Lava's bluster is nonsense, but it touches on an interesting topic. This is why Sir Isaac Newton invented Calculus.

The law; F = ma is true in any circumstances... so what happens when the value of F, and thus 'a' are changing over the time for which you are making a calculation.

This calculation is especially important for understanding Orbits... something that Newton and his contemporaries did. In an elliptical orbit Force and acceleration change drastically as the object gets closer and further from the Sun (or central body).

F = ma is true for any instance during this orbit. If you want to understand the cumulative effect of this force... you take an integral. An integral sums up each part of the central force over infinitesimally small periods of time.

Once you know that F=ma is true, and that F is changing... you set up the integral over time.... the calculations then match with experiment in almost all circumstances (until you start to get measurable relativistic effects, but that is another lesson).

You know, I could ask for citations and proof of all these empirical tests you are claiming, but I'm just going to assume tentatively that they are true out of laziness.

I've also googled the question of different mass objects accelerating at different rates and there is a lot of concurrency that the mass doesn't affect the acceleration rate, so by that logic the moon and a cannonball (or two cannonballs of slightly different masses) accelerate at the same rate despite the fact that they experience different forces in proportion to their masses, which is what you have argued all along.

The reason I am led to concede, in addition to the math you have shown, is that my understanding of Einstein's gravitational theory is that gravity is not a 'pull' exerted by objects on each other, which if true would suggest that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones because their gravitational pull would be added to that of the body they were falling toward.

Rather, if both objects/bodies are just moving through each other's gravitational 'curvature' at a rate determined by the distance from the object, then each object would move through the other's 'curved space' at the acceleration rate determined by that distance and mass of the other body.

So the Earth would then be 'orbiting' the moon at the acceleration rate determined by its distance from the moon, while the moon would also be orbiting the Earth at the acceleration rate determined by its distance.

Hopefully what I am saying here sufficiently concedes that you were right and I was wrong in my (faulty) reading of the gravitational equation, which assumed that the inclusion of the second mass number (that of the falling object) would affect the acceleration rate of gravity, when in reality it only affects the weight of the object (i.e. the force exerted by/on the object due to gravity) and not the rate of acceleration, which would only vary due to distance.

I am acknowledge my mistaken assumption here and now, but I still insist that science is not just about accepting/acknowledging mistakes when they become clear to you, but also about going further and asking why/how nature behaves as it does. In other words, it's not enough to simply gain clarity about something, but it is important to go beyond your current understanding, seek out further experiments/observations to answer further questions about why/how and 'under what conditions, what varies?'

There is always further testing to be done and further questions to ask. And none of it begins or ends with the equations or calculations.

In this case, I am assuming that this equation is accurate and I am exercising tentative faith that all the data claimed to empirically support the equation is accurate and has been accurately tested and checked, because I certainly haven't done any verification/repeatability testing of my own. Nevertheless, I have contemplated what you have said and what others have said on the internet, and based on my current understanding derived from these claims/information, I am conceding that mass doesn't cause any variation in the acceleration rate of an object at a certain distance.

So you are right, seeing one's mistakes can be a result of critical thinking, but it is certainly not the only role critical thinking has to play in science.