This explanation is just a deliberately wrong textbook simplification everyone is expected to simply believe (while also repeating mantras about empiricism and

This explanation is just a deliberately wrong textbook simplification everyone is expected to simply believe (while also repeating mantras about empiricism and believing nothing). It is as vulgar as, say, the belief that human sacrifice will calm down some Forest God (so please don't ever look down on all those stupid “uneducated” people, everyone is in the same boat). Newton most certainly did not mean the “same thing” we mean. His context, his models, his metaphysical and spiritual ground were all different from ours. All of that is simply ignored. A student today is presented with appropriated thoroughly mutated cuts, is told that those are Newton's contribution to the glorious building of Science, and never questions that afterwards.