Actually you are much better reading the life and times of Robert Hooke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke) for this argument.

See in essence Newtons 3rd law is really the bit Hookes added in.

Hookes is an interesting man but to me he should be known as the man of balance and it's no surprise the law of elasticity bears his name.

Essentially Hookes idea is there is only two ways to balance a "system" that is to

1.) Have a system opposed by a system going the other way
2.) Have a system the result of which is measured and the measured result used to adjust the system

His idea was basic any system was inherently unstable and subject to runaway. He applied the idea mecahnics, biology, philospophy, human biology and behaviour.

Hookes argued strongly about seperating the powers of government and law enforcement based around the balancing problem that a government system would run into unbalance.

It was only later with Nobel and dynamite and later nuclear critical runaway was the idea of how bad a single sided force runaway can be.

In electric circuits it was realized that the forward force (voltage) was always opposed by resistance in the circuit and in fluid and air dynamics pressure was opposed by drag. Friction was thus added in by Guillaume Amontons (although Leonardo Da Vinci had actually noted the effect much earlier) as the counter balance to motion.

In essence science had realized what Hookes had always said a system can only remain balanced by monitoring or by counter balancing two opposing systems. Thus finally we added the counterbalancing of forces into the laws of motion.

I actually once saw an interesting presentation that basically said if you accept big bang is about gravity and you accept gravity as a force then you can argue it must be a one sided force because big bang is in someways gravity in runaway in the same way we see thermodynamic explosions or nuclear runaway explosions. The suggestion was as things move faster they get heavier via relativity (ergo gravity drives it's own demise).
So the universe expands faster and faster until essentially everything is very close to the speed of light at which point the universe runs out of gravity and you get "the big pop". Weird idea but worth throwing in the context we are talking here.

BTW: The translation of the book "System of the World" by Hookes is a recommended read if you ever get a chance.

Last edited by Orac; 09/07/11 03:04 AM.
I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.