Question

who first proposed the idea that a force of attraction apllied to all objects in space

Answer 1

The idea of a universal force of attraction acting on all objects in space is most famously attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. In his work "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica," published in 1687, Newton formulated the law of universal gravitation. He proposed that every mass attracts every other mass in the universe with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. This was a groundbreaking concept that laid the foundation for classical mechanics and our understanding of gravitational forces in the universe.