Definition of "gravitation" []

• Physics The natural phenomenon of attraction between physical objects with mass or energy. (noun)
• Physics The act or process of moving under the influence of this attraction. (noun)
• A movement toward a source of attraction: the gravitation of the middle classes to the suburbs. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "He carried on the work of earlier astronomers by the application of higher mathematics, and proved that the force of attraction which we call gravitation was a universal one, and that the sun and the moon and the earth, and all the heavenly bodies, are attracted to one another inversely as the square of the distance."
• "The facts of what we call gravitation are obvious, and any attempt to disregard them would result in disaster, yet no satisfactory explanation of gravitation has yet been discovered: many theories have been suggested, but no theory has yet been proved to be true."
• "To this spiritual world we may refer the marvellously complex forces which we know as gravitation, cohesion, chemical force, radiant force, and electricity, without which the material universe could not exist for"