Philosophers have disagreed on the composition of force for decades. The main divergence concerns the fundamental question: given a certain motion that is observable, which force or forces are present in it, component or resultant forces? The present paper focuses on the conditions for dealing with this problem. I will argue that we are not able to infer force from the observation of a motion, as required by the problem. I will further argue that the validity of the Newtonian algorithm is not a sufficient condition for that inference because the Gaussian algorithm, which is equally valid, differs from the former with regard to the forces present in motions. Under these circumstances, I will make recourse to an experiment available in physics in which the force present in a motion is measured. Thus, we obtain a numerical value for this force. This result, playing the role of a counterexample, clarifies the composition of force issue significantly.

中文翻译：

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论力的构成：算法与实验

几十年来，哲学家们对力的构成一直存在分歧。主要分歧涉及一个基本问题：给定一个可观察的特定运动，其中存在哪些力，是分力还是合力？本文重点讨论处理这个问题的条件。我会争辩说，我们无法根据问题的要求从对运动的观察中推断出力。我将进一步论证牛顿算法的有效性不是该推理的充分条件，因为同样有效的高斯算法在运动中存在的力方面与前者不同。在这种情况下，我将求助于物理学中的一个实验，在该实验中测量运动中存在的力。因此，我们获得了该力的数值。