HOW NEWTON'S LAW (THE LAW OF TWO-BODY GRAVITATION) BECAME CALLED THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION

This article attempts to dispel the biggest myth surrounding Newton's law of gravitation for over 300 years. It explores the history of the term "law of universal gravitation" in physics and the consequences of its unjustified application to the law of two-body gravity. This term was preceded by Robert Hooke's term "universal attraction," which referred not to the law of gravity between two bodies, but to the attraction between all bodies in the universe. This "substitution" of terms led to kept Hooke's contribution in the shadows for over three centuries. In science, this led to the true law of universal gravitation, as Robert Hooke envisioned it, never being discovered.