The essay was unsuccessfully submitted for a prize that had been offered by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris.
Berkeley rejected Sir Isaac Newton's absolute space, time and motion.
With this essay, Berkeley is considered to be the "precursor of Mach and Einstein" (Karl Popper).
[2][3][4] We must pay attention to facts regarding things and their nature, not to words or to someone's authority.
Force, gravity, and attraction are mathematical, hypothetical abstractions and they are not found in nature as physical qualities.
Natural science is limited to experiments and mechanics, but it assumes that God was the prime source of motion.
Physicists explain and understand phenomena by showing how they agree with the laws of motion.
Fictional, abstract, general terms such as force, action, and reaction are used in theories, formulas, and computations.
The principle and cause of motion itself is a metaphysical, theological, and moral concern.
Mathematical considerations of spatial and temporal infinitesimals lead to paradoxes.
Just as we cannot know absolute space, we cannot know whether the whole universe is at rest or is moving uniformly in a direction.
To determine the true nature of motion, we must follow three rules: (1) distinguish mathematical hypotheses from the nature of things; (2) beware of abstractions; (3) consider motion as sensible or imaginable and be content with relative measures.