  By the time we reach the seventeenth century and the Newtonian revolution in physics, the problem reappears in the context of a change of criteria of explanation and intelligibility. This has been beautifully described in an article by Y. Gingras (2001). Gingras argues that “the use of mathematics in dynamics (as distinct from its use in kinematics) had the effect of transforming the very meaning of the term ‘explanation’ as it was used by philosophers in the seventeenth century” (385). What Gingras describes, among other things, is how the mathematical treatment of force espoused by Newton and his followers—a treatment that ignored the mechanisms that could explain why and how this force operated—became an accepted standard for explanation during the eighteenth century. After referring to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ discussions on the mechanical explanation of gravity, he remarks: