Isaac Newton — "What is there in places almost empty of air (such as the space between the plane…"
What is there in places almost empty of air (such as the space between the planets) to hinder the free motion of bodies?
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More from Isaac Newton
"I have studied these things – you have not."
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"What is it that induces a man to be a philosopher? It is not the love of truth, but the love of fame, or the love of novelty, or the love of power."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Newton is asking: if the space between planets is nearly empty of any resisting substance, what could possibly slow a moving body down? Nothing. This is a rhetorical challenge to anyone insisting space must be filled with something. In plain terms, empty space offers no friction, so objects keep moving freely — a foundational insight explaining why planets orbit indefinitely without losing speed.
Relevance to Isaac Newton
This sits at the core of Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) and his First Law of Motion: objects in motion stay in motion unless a force acts on them. Newton was actively dismantling Descartes' ether theory, which held that swirling fluid filled interplanetary space and drove planetary orbits. By pointing to near-vacuum conditions, he justified why planets orbit perpetually without a continuous push — the central problem his career solved.
The era
In the 1680s, René Descartes' vortex theory dominated natural philosophy — space was considered a plenum of swirling ethereal fluid carrying planets along their paths. True vacuum was philosophically suspect; Aristotle had declared nature abhors it, and the Church tied cosmic order to a filled, purposeful universe. Newton's pointed question attacked the ether concept directly, clearing the way for a universe governed purely by gravity acting across genuinely empty space.
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