 There are two points to make about this line of argument. First, the relationist could reply that they need not explain all situations which are possible according to Newtonian mechanics, because that theory is to be rejected in favor of one which invokes only distance and time relations between bodies, but which approximates to Newton’s if matter is distributed suitably. Such a relationist would be following Mach’s proposal, which we will discuss in the sequel article. Such a position would be satisfactory only to the extent that a suitable concrete replacement theory to Newton’s theory is developed; Mach never offered such a theory, but recently more progress has been made (again, see the companion article for discussion).