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gravity a field theory?
:::Newtonian gravity was, in Newton's formulation, an acceleration vector field theory, yes. Lagrange rewrote the equations to express it as a scalar field theory and that's what we used until 1916. --[[User:KSorenson|KSorenson]] 22:22, 15 November 2009 (EST)
:::Newtonian gravity was, in Newton's formulation, an acceleration vector field theory, yes. Lagrange rewrote the equations to express it as a scalar field theory and that's what we used until 1916. --[[User:KSorenson|KSorenson]] 22:22, 15 November 2009 (EST)
(Unindent) I really don't want to get bogged down in this just now (I don't think any of us do :-) and I really, really, really should be making the graphs for the GR article (just taking a sanity break). But I think this is roughly the possition we should take on the article: Newton's theory of gravity ''is'' a field theory, sort of. It may not satisfy the modern criteria for a field theory (whatever those criteria are; I defer to Kate on that), but we should certainly give it some kind of "honorary" status. Why? Because people learn about the "gravitational field", and that it's a vector field, in high school or whenever. It's probably the first vector field that people learn about. It's the first thing that gets plugged into F=ma. It would be a shame not to call it a field theory. Now Newton had never heard of vector fields. So we should probably give it some kind of status as an "honorary, retroactive field theory". And not worry about whether it really is one under modern standards. OK? [[User:PatrickD|PatrickD]] 22:44, 15 November 2009 (EST)