Force
Sir Isaac Newton described the motion of all objects using the concepts of inertia and force, and in doing so he found they obey certain conservation laws. In 1687, Newton published his thesis "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica". In this work Newton set out three laws of motion that to this day are the way forces are described in physics.
History of the philosophy of field theory
Field theory, the study of dynamical fields in physics, was originally a mathematical formulation of Newtonian mechanics. The success of Newtonian physics since the publication of Isaac Newton's "Principia" in 1687 provided a framework with which to investigate the motion and forces associated with electricity and magnetism. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb showed in 1785 that the repulsive force between two electrically charged spheres obeys the same (up to a sign) force law as Newton's law of universal gravitation: the force between two bodies is directed along the line separating the bodies and its magnitude is proportional to the product of their charges (for gravitation, their masses) divided by the square of their distance apart. André-Marie Ampère showed in 1823 that the force between infinitesimal lengths of current-carrying wires similarly obeys an inverse-square law such that the force is directed along the line of separation between the wire elements.