The Law of Gravitation from Isaac Newton is described as consisting of a force-field that emanates from an object by virtue of its mass and affects other objects at a distance by virtue of their mass. Newton himself was not at all happy with the idea of action at a distance. Konstantin Meyl fixes the problem.
According to Wikipedia, the modern formulation of Newtons Law of Gravitational attraction is as follows:
“Every point mass attracts every single other point mass by a force acting along the line intersecting both points. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them” – Wikipedia
So each object in the universe is having an effect on other objects, possibly a great distance away. There is no mechanical connection but the idea of something called a ‘force’ has been introduced to make the whole thing seem more plausible.
Newton formalised this and produced a workable theory which was vindicated by experiment, but he wasn’t happy with the implications:
“That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.” – Newton 1692 – Wikipedia
Good man!
The formulation of this ‘influence’ as stated above gives the idea that there is some sort of connection between two distant objects and each is having a causal influence on the other across a space of possibly millions of miles. This impression is so strong that it is given a name, ‘gravity’, and physicists adopt it as a real entity.
Years later, Newton was to write: “I have not yet been able to discover the cause of these properties of gravity from phenomena and I feign no hypotheses…. It is enough that gravity does really exist and acts according to the laws I have explained, and that it abundantly serves to account for all the motions of celestial bodies.” – Newton 1917 Wikipedia
Newton now accepts that gravity itself as an existing phenomenon and is instrumental in the movement of all celestial bodies. The problem of action at a distance has been circumvented by framing gravity itself and not the distant object, as the causal factor, the prime mover.
Progress has been made; the thing causing an object to move around is now not a mass many miles away, but the strength and direction of a local ‘field quantity’. The immediate cause is not distant but but proximal. This marks the start of a move away from material or mechanical action and towards a field physics where abstract field interactions are paramount.
The modern formulation places the particles of distant mass as doing the attracting, as being the first link in a causal chain acting through gravity as a mediator. Newton, however, could find nothing that could be the cause of gravity and so merely had to accept its existence.
In the paragraph quoted above, Newton doesn’t even describe it as a ‘force’ but only says that it accounts for the motions of the objects.
So what is it that causes the gravitational field?
In the field physics of Konstantin Meyl, the field is ever present and evolves according to the field equations of the Theory of Objectivity. There is no ‘mass’ needed to account for the source of the field, no mass for the field to act upon and the motion is not described as being caused by a ‘force’
There are no ‘objects’ in the theory of Meyl and no ‘matter’ exists as distinct from the field. Instead, what we call ‘atoms’ consists of stable states of field vortices which combine together to form molecules and again to form objects, humans and planets.
There is no separation between field and matter and so no need to describe mechanisms by which one may affect the other. Matter and Field are continuous with each other, made of the same ‘stuff’ and subject to the same laws.
The idea of causation as usually conceived, depends upon some sort of separation, some distinction between discrete objects so that an effect or influence may pass from one to the other, possibly via some intermediary such as gravity. This results in a proliferation of concepts, influences and ‘stuffs’ such as gravity, mass (three types no less!), charge, magnetic force, inertia, energy, the permittivity of space etc.
With Meyl’s theory, the field develops according to the field equation at every point in the universe and the emergent patterns are what we perceive as reality. In practice this means that various patterns are formed (eg planets) which result in a concentrated field strength that diminishes with distance and it is this that appears to act as as some sort of ‘force’ field by virtue of the effect that it has on other field variations (other planets, falling apples, human beings).
There is no real matter, mass or forces, merely the illusion of such. The moving together of two ‘objects’ is not by gravity or any action at a distance but by the interaction of the field with itself.
‘Causes’ as such do not travel all over the place but field changes propagate at the speed of light giving the impression of separation and causality whereas in actuality, everything develops as an undivided whole but according to local field conditions only.
Related pages:
References:
Scalar Waves – Konstantin Meyl
https://avalonlibrary.net/Nikola_Tesla/Books/Meyl%20-%20Scalar%20Waves%20(First%20Tesla%20Physics%20Textbook).pdf
The website of Konstantin Meyl: http://meyl.eu
Newton’s law of universal gravitation – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation