George Berkeley
Berkeley argued that forces and gravity, as defined by Newton, constituted "occult qualities" that "expressed nothing distinctly". He held that those who posited "something unknown in a body of which they have no idea and which they call the principle of motion, are in fact simply stating that the principle of motion is unknown." Therefore, those who "affirm that active force, action, and the principle of motion are really in bodies are adopting an opinion not based on experience." Forces and gravity existed nowhere in the phenomenal world. On the other hand, if they resided in the category of "soul" or "incorporeal thing", they "do not properly belong to physics" as a matter. Berkeley thus concluded that forces lay beyond any kind of empirical observation and could not be a part of proper science. He proposed his theory of signs as a means to explain motion and matter without reference to the "occult qualities" of force and gravity.
History of centrifugal and centripetal forces
Later scientists pointed out (as did Newton) that the laws of mechanics were the same for all observers that differed only by uniform translation; that is, all observers that differed in motion only by a constant velocity. Hence, "absolute space" was not preferred, but only one of a set of frames related by Galilean transformations.
Ultimately this notion of the transformation properties of physical laws between frames played a more and more central role. 
It was noted that accelerating frames exhibited "fictitious forces" like the centrifugal force. These forces did not behave under transformation like other forces, providing a means of distinguishing them. This peculiarity of these forces led to the names "inertial forces", "pseudo-forces" or "fictitious forces". In particular, fictitious forces "did not appear at all" in some frames: those frames differing from that of the fixed stars by only a constant velocity. In short, a frame tied to the "fixed stars" is merely a member of the class of "inertial frames", and absolute space is an unnecessary and logically untenable concept. The preferred, or "inertial frames", were identifiable by the "absence of fictitious forces".