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Originally Posted by Sithdarth
I still have no idea what you are talking about. As far as gravity goes you've got three choices. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, which is nothing but math, Gravitational Field Theory, from which can be derived Newton's Law and which postulates the gravitational field, and Relativity. I guess you could be talking about Gravitational Field Theory but I've never heard of anyone shortening to anything other than Gravitational Field Theory. If that is what you mean then I wonder who exactly taught you Gravitational Field Theory under the title of gravity or gravitational. This is why there is no such thing as a theory of gravity or a theory with the same name as Newton's Law which describes gravity. The closest I can get to what you seem to be implying is Gravitational Field Theory and that wasn't around until about the same time as Electromagnetic field theory both of which where a virtual eye-blink before General Relativity.
I don't know maybe the naming conventions are different but the way I learned it was Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, Gravitational Field Theory, and General Relativity. Which clearly delineates all three as being different than the other two. Although Newton's Law can be derived from either and Gravitational Field Theory is essentially General Relativity without spacetime and relativity. Of course none of them even begin to answer the why of gravity. Gravitational Field Theory and General Relativity give you the how, math and numbers, and the what/where, fields/spacetime, but not the why.
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I'm referring to a "theory of gravity" as the general explanations that have been postulated from relativity and/or quantum mechanics.
Even if we don't know the fine details we still postulate that gravity is instrinsic property of matter and curving of space time and then you got all the other stuff like postulated gravitons and things. This is not really my field but it doesn't matter because even the fact that matter attracts other matter is a theory and not a law.
Most of the maths of say general relativity could be classed as laws but they are often interpreted in a framework of explaining gravity (through space time curving or whatever else they decide) which is a theory.
The point was people were talking about whether gravity was a theory or a law and the problem is the word "gravity" can be both. There is the law of "gravitation" which is a law but when we talk about gravity we generally talk about the attraction of objects together which is a theory. My "theory of gravity" is the idea of gravity as something that brings objects together, you can squabble about the details all you want- it doesn't matter.
But if you want, I'll pick one. "Theory of gravity" is now the fact that a property of matter is the ability to instrinsically attract other objects according to the laws of gravitation, which was a theory that was held for considerably periods of time. There we go. But it still has no relevance at all to what I'm talking about. The very concept of "gravity" is a theoretical construct. All the law of gravitations (and later equations) describe is how two objects move towards each other. If you have anything beyond that you are looking at a theory, a concept of gravity.