Newton, according to Dr Pemberton, thought in 1666 that the moon moves so like a falling body that it has a similar centripetal force to the earth, 20 years before he demonstrated this conclusion from the laws of motion in the Principia.
Much of the Principia consists of synthetical deductions from definitions and axioms. But the discovery of the centripetal force of the planets to the sun is an analytic deduction from the facts of their motion discovered by Kepler to their real ground, and is so stated by Newton in the first regressive order of Aristotle - P-M, S-P, S-M.
Newton did indeed first show synthetically what kind of motions by mechanical laws have their ground in a centripetal force varying inversely as the square of the distance (all P is M); but his next step was, not to deduce synthetically the planetary motions, but to make a new start from the planetary motions as facts established by Kepler's laws and as examples of the kind of motions in question (all S is P); and then, by combining these two premises, one mechanical and the other astronomical, he analytically deduced that these facts of planetary motion have their ground in a centripetal force varying inversely as the squares of the distances of the planets from the sun (all S is M).
This done, as the major is convertible, the analytic order - P-M, S-P, S-M - was easily inverted into the synthetic order - M-P, S-M, S-P; and in this progressive order the deduction as now taught begins with the centripetal force of the sun as real ground, and deduces the facts of planetary motion as consequences.
It is noticeable that Wundt quotes Newton's discovery of the centripetal force of the planets to the sun as an instance of this supposed hypothetical, analytic, inductive method; as if Newton's analysis were a hypothesis of the centripetal force to the sun, a deduction of the given facts of planetary motion, and a verification of the hypothesis by the given facts, and as if such a process of hypothetical deduction could be identical with either analysis or induction.
