The Composition of Forces

This article defends a realist account of the composition of Newtonian forces, dubbed ‘residualism’. According to residualism, the resultant force acting on a body is identical to the component forces acting on it that do not prevent one another from bringing about the body's acceleration. Several reasons to favour residualism over alternative accounts of the composition of forces are advanced: (i) Residualism reconciles realism about component...