I suppose it necessary to keep digging this stuff up. Perhaps when enough of it is dug up people will finally see the conceptual problems of modern physics began long before modern quantum and relativity theory. They began, in my estimation, when some PRINCIPLES of motion championed by some 17 th century mechanical philosophers were implicitly elevated in the second half of the 18 the century to the level of DOCTRINE.
Harry http://www.bookrags.com/Christiaan_Huygens "Huygens's mechanistic tendencies are most evident in his studies of gravity and light. His 1659 gravitational researches presupposed and built upon Descartes's vortex theory‹gravity is caused by particles of subtle matter swirling with great speed around Earth. Huygens maintained that vortex particles have a tendency (conatus) to move away from Earth's center. In realizing their conatus, vortex particles exert a force on ordinary particles of matter through direct contact, which brings about in the latter a conatus to move toward Earth's center. Thus, the centrifugal force of vortex particles produces a centripetal force in ordinary matter. Fleeing vortex particles are continually replaced, thus maintaining a constant gravitational force. Next, Huygens established the law of centrifugal force for uniform circular motion as well as the similarity of the centrifugal and the gravitational conatus. He also distinguished between quantitas materiae and weight, the former being proportional to the space occupied by ordinary matter, while the latter was treated as a gravitational effect proportional to quantitas materiae. This is likely the earliest insight into the distinction between mass and weight. Though Huygens rejected Newton's theory of universal gravitation because it required action-at-a-distance, his own mechanistic account failed to explain satisfactorily how subtle vortical-matter transferred centripetal conatus to ordinary matter."
