Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

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Force
(3,056 words)

1. Physics

1.1. Concepts

Physicists today define a force as a physical value that will change the motion of a body. Originally, among the ideas to become associated with the concept of force was that of muscular tension. The concept had a wide spectrum of meaning in early modern scholarly discourse. There was no clear distinction between force in its essential sense of the stimulus to a movement and force in the wider sense of the stimulus to general changes in an object [1]; [3]; [12]. Krünitz' Ökonomische Encyklopädie, for instance, sees the p…

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Rammer, Gerhard and Lehmann-Brauns, Sicco, “Force”, in: Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Editors of the English edition: Graeme Dunphy, Andrew Gow. Original German Edition: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. Im Auftrag des Kulturwissenschaftlichen Instituts (Essen) und in Verbindung mit den Fachherausgebern herausgegeben von Friedrich Jaeger. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH 2005–2012. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2352-0272_emho_COM_022711>
First published online: 2015
First print edition: 20180126



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