When no such resistances exist, movement must be perpetual, as is the case with the heavenly bodies, which are moving in a void.
Forces, no matter what their difference of magnitude may be, will exert their full influence conjointly, each as though the other did not exist.
Thus, when a ball is suffered to drop from the mouth of a cannon, it falls to the ground in a certain interval of time through the influence of gravity upon it.

If, then, it be fired from the cannon, though now it may be projected some thousands of feet in a second, the effect of gravity upon it will be precisely the same as before.

In the intermingling of forces there is no deterioration; each produces its own specific effect.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, through the works of Borelli, Hooke, and Huyghens, it had become plain that circular motions could be accounted for by the laws of Galileo.

Borelli, treating of the motions of Jupiter's satellites, shows how a circular movement may arise under the influence of a central force.

Hooke exhibited the inflection of a direct motion into a circular by a supervening central attraction.
The year 1687 presents, not only an epoch in European science, but also in the intellectual development of man.