ABSTRACT
The favourable circumstances mentioned include the degree of familiarity with mathematics that both possessed; since the establishment of the physical concept of law in the early modern period was closely linked to the enthronement of that discipline as the supreme science. The first of the two scholars chosen is Matthias Bernegger, who not only was well acquainted with mathematics and astronomy, but also and above all entered at a relatively early date into a regular and sustained correspondence with Johannes Kepler. The other scholar to be considered here, Richard Cumberland, did in his treatise De legibus naturae, published in 1672; but other scholars belonging to Bernegger's Strasbourg School Johann Heinrich Boecler and Johannes G. Scheffer. Cumberland also names as further authorities for the laws of motion Christopher Wren and Christiaan Huygens, although without stating any precise source which omission is remedied by the translator of De legibus naturae, John Maxwell.
