Translation of MacLaurin’s Dissertation

Abstract

I. Among the various phenomena of corporeal nature, there are two, which, as they are very greatly distinguished almost before all others, having been examined in themselves, have occupied to a very great extent the philosophers of all time. One of these is that general tendency towards its centre of all bodies moving about the surface of the earth, which is commonly called gravity; the other is the regular gyration of planets in their orbits, which recurs with definite periods. Various hypotheses have been devised by various people for the explanation in mechanical terms of those phenomena. An impartial examination of these will prepare the way for explaining and developing that general law of universal gravitation, to which, it will be established, those two most noble effects are to be referred as a common foundation, even if at first sight they seem to have nothing in common; from this we will also seize the opportunity to consider along the way certain other forces of nature, which it is necessary to put in place for the solution of certain other phenomena, which philosophers have undertaken to explain likewise by mechanical theories.