The Le Sage Theory of Gravitation

By Georges-Louis Le Sage

Le Sage's theory of gravitation is a kinetic theory of gravity originally proposed by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in 1690 and later by Georges-Louis Le Sage in 1748. The theory proposed a mechanical explanation for Newton's gravitational force in terms of streams of tiny unseen particles (which Le Sage called ultra-mundane corpuscles) impacting all material objects from all directions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547105022

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Georges-Louis Le Sage

The Le Sage Theory of Gravitation

EAN 8596547105022

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

THE NEWTONIAN LUCRETIUS

THE AIM OF THIS MEMOIR

SECTIONS I-XXX

APPENDIX.

INTRODUCTION

Table of Contents

[139] Le Sage's paper is one much oftener referred to than directly quoted from or read, and this is partly because the original is very little known, although it is in no more obscure a place than the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy, printed in the year 1784.

Le Sage appears to have been one of the academicians who, though in the capital of Prussia, were bound to write French of any sort rather than German, and it is only fair to the present translator to say that certain passages of the original hold the meaning of the author so securely hidden that it is doubtful if anyone could render them into English with entire confidence that their whole meaning had been grasped. Whatever the original obscurity, however, the translation, I believe, means something definite and, I hope, true.

The reader will recall that at the time when Le Sage wrote, the corpuscular theory of light was universally accepted, the laws of the conservation of energy and of matter were as yet unknown, and the kinetic theory of gases was quite beyond the scientific horizon. Hence it is a matter for surprise, not that Le Sage introduces in explanation of the difficulties met with hypotheses now in a form appearing somewhat crude, though doubtless still conceivable, but rather that his statement requires so little modification to fit it to the thought of the present day.

Some of the great objections made to Le Sage's theory, such as the supposed impossibility of this shower of his atoms acting with equal effect in the interior of the densest bodies as on the surface, are made in probable ignorance of how entirely satisfactory the hypothesis of the author is in this respect; I mean so far as the use of the mathematical infinity can render it so; while other difficulties have been, if not deared up, at least rendered less formidable by the advance of modern knowledge, which is on the whole clearly making more for the hypothesis than against, if we put it in the form in which Le Sage would doubtless put it were he living now.

Thus the objection of the hypothesis of countless atoms coming from and going to infinity, to the dissipation of their kinetic energy into heat upon impact with solids-this latter class of objections seems to have been very generally met in recent years. Thus it has been made [140] evident that the particles in question could vibrate in long closed paths with the same effect as if they came in from outer space and returned to it in straight lines, as the author originally supposed; and as to their