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.
Potential energy
The term "potential energy" was introduced by the 19th-century Scottish engineer and physicist William Rankine, although it has links to Greek philosopher Aristotle's concept of potentiality.
Potential energy is associated with forces that act on a body in a way that the total work done by these forces on the body depends only on the initial and final positions of the body in space. These forces, that are called "conservative forces", can be represented at every point in space by vectors expressed as gradients of a certain scalar function called "potential".