Kepler's laws of planetary motion planets. However, Newton states in his Principia that he considers forces from a mathematical point of view, not a physical, thereby taking an instrumentalist view. Moreover, he does not assign a cause to gravity. Newton defined the force acting on a planet to be the product of its mass and the acceleration (see Newton's laws of motion). So: The Sun plays an unsymmetrical part, which is unjustified. So he assumed, in Newton's law of universal gravitation: As the planets have small masses compared to that of the Sun, the orbits conform approximately to Kepler's laws. Newton's model improves upon Kepler's
Kepler's laws of planetary motion Kepler's laws of planetary motion In astronomy, Kepler's laws of planetary motion are three scientific laws describing the motion of planets around the Sun. Most planetary orbits are nearly circular, and careful observation and calculation are required in order to establish that they are not perfectly circular. Calculations of the orbit of Mars, whose published values are somewhat suspect, indicated an elliptical orbit. From this, Johannes Kepler inferred that other bodies in the Solar System, including those farther away from the Sun, also have elliptical orbits. Kepler's work (published between 1609 and 1619) improved the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus,