Isaac Newton — "The parts of all homogeneal hard bodies which fully touch one another, stick tog…"
The parts of all homogeneal hard bodies which fully touch one another, stick together with a very strong attraction.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
This describes cohesion — the tendency of identical solid materials to bond tightly when their surfaces make full contact. Newton is identifying a short-range attractive force built into matter itself, separate from gravity, that holds objects together at the microscopic level. It anticipates modern understanding of intermolecular and atomic bonding forces, suggesting that attraction is a fundamental property of matter, not just something planets and masses exert at cosmic scales.
Relevance to Isaac Newton
Newton spent years extending his theory of attraction beyond gravity. Published in Opticks (1704) as Query 31, this reflects his lifelong conviction that nature operates through universal forces of attraction and repulsion. A mathematician and alchemist, Newton obsessively sought unifying principles governing all matter — from falling apples to chemical reactions. This quote shows him reaching toward what we now call intermolecular forces, consistent with his corpuscular theory of matter.
The era
In Newton's era, Aristotelian explanations of matter were finally crumbling. Boyle and others were reviving ancient atomism, but why matter coheres — why a stone stays a stone — remained deeply mysterious. This quote, from the early 1700s, arrived as natural philosophers raced to explain chemical affinity and material strength mechanically. Newton's invocation of attraction as matter's intrinsic property was radical, helping shift science from vague essences toward quantifiable, universal forces.
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