Comments on the Culture of the Force

Abstract

I think Frank Wilczek is too harsh when he implies that the use of equations like F = ma is a matter of intellectual inertia. In practical terms, in engineering, and even in the design of physics instruments, we are interested in the values taken by certain variables x i and the known dependence is in the form of differential equations dx i /dt = v i and dv i/dt = f(x i, v i). When x i, is some position, the last is a form of F = ma. Many physicists—David Bohm and John Stewart Bell, for example—have argued that position is the fundamental variable … hence the importance of F = ma. © 2005 American Institute of Physics.