Rutabagas of a quiet past in a stormy present

By the turn of the twentieth century scientific group think was in an impasse. The branch of physics that was most developed as an experimental science was Galilean-Newtonian mechanics.

The law of inertia

Bodies when removed from interaction with other bodies will continue in their states of rest or straight line uniform motion. In other words, the motion of such bodies is unaccelerated.

Supposedly, the laws of mechanics take the same form in all inertial systems, that is, in all those coordinate systems which can be obtained by subjecting any one inertial system to arbitrary Galilean transformations.

All mechanistic branches, such as the theory of elastic bodies and hydrodynamics, or the mechanics of rigid bodies, can be deduced from the mechanics of free mass points by introducing suitable energies and by carrying out certain limiting processes.