Abstract
Newton’s great Principia is doubly tripartite. It is composed of three “books” and has three major goals: to set forth new foundations and methods of rational mechanics; to disclose a new natural philosophy; and to develop a new system of the world based on gravitational celestial dynamics. Attention shall be focussed here on the crucial step that enabled Newton to develop and to use the concept of universal gravity and to state its quantitative law. A plausible explanation shall be offered for Newton’s daring in proposing a universal force that could extend over hundreds of millions of miles of empty space, a kind of force that in its basic properties went squarely against the principles of the “received” mechanical philosophy.1
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