Wikipedia/ Law of Attraction
In the history
of science , the
laws of attraction are a set of assumed
laws or, in a sense, a general catch phrase used when discussing
the nature of bodies that attract. Historically, the concept
of there being a known set of the laws
of attraction evolved
from the laws
of affinity , which numbered up to ten depending upon which
chemist was sourced.
History
In c. 390 BC, Plato built
on Empedocles '
conception of philia (attractive force) and neikos (repulsive
force) by postulating the first law of affinity that "likes tend
toward likes" (likes attract), e.g. earth to earth or water to
water, etc. In 1250, Albertus
Magnus applied the conception of 'affinity' to chemical systems
and postulated four laws of affinity.
In 1687, Isaac
Newton proposed that chemical affinities were due to certain
forces that would likely follow similar laws analogous to the
three laws of planetary motion. He expanded on these views in 'Query
31' of his 1704 Opticks .
In 1718, after translating Newton's Opticks, French physician
and chemist Étienne
Geoffroy proposed a new law of affinity that 'whenever
two substances are united that have a disposition to combine
and a third is added that has a greater affinity with one of
them, these two will unite, and drive out the other.' Using
this law, he published the first ever affinity tables.
In 1749, building on Geoffroy's affinity table, French chemist
J. P. Macquer published six truths of chemical affinity, which
encompassed both Plato's and Geoffroy's affinity laws, as well
as four new ones. In 1766, he published seven types of affinity
in his Dictionnaire de chymie.
In this manner, most consider Isaac
Newton to be the one who stimulated the discovery of the "laws
of attraction". Before this, however, the ancient Greeks
knew from magnetic interactions that "opposites attract" and "likes
repel". This factor is modelled essentially via Coulomb's
law.
In the latter half of the 20th century, the theory of electromagnetism ,
unified by James
Clerk Maxwell in 1873, is the physics of
the electromagnetic
field ; a field encompassing
all of space which
exerts a force on particles that
possess the property of electric
charge , and is in turn affected by the presence and motion
of those particles. This effect, as modeled via Maxwell's
field equations , can be thought of as the electromagnetic
laws of
attraction and repulsion.
With the discovery of sub-atomic particles, such as the quark (1964),
and the fundamental
forces , the term "laws
of attraction" has been
replaced with the conception of field
particle exchange, and the boding effect created therefrom.
Subsequently, in the 20th century the laws of affinity were replaced
by the laws of quantum
chemistry and chemical
thermodynamics .
Human laws of attraction
In the mid 20th century, social scientists began to apply Plato's
first law of affinity, i.e. "likes attract", to relationship
life noting that, for example, people tend to marry based on such
factors as age, religion, socioeconomic status, and education.
In the 1950s, in opposition to this view, sociologist Robert
F. Winch proposed the "opposites attract" theory,
arguing that people are attracted to those whose needs conversely
match his or her own. [1]
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_attraction
References
^ Hoffman,
Edward; Weiner, B., Marcella (2003). The Love Compatibility Book.
New World Library. ISBN
1-577331-226 -0.
|