On Newton's paradoxes

Reading the Principia [1] it is easy to realize that Newton, without being aware of the fact, has corrected the law of the fall of bodies formulated by Galilei. In the present paper we examine the consequences of such a fact and show that they affect the entire Celestial Mechanics, being related to the very small 43” per century of the perihelion shift of Mercury as well as to the substantial 50” per year of the grand phenomenon of the lunisolar precession. key word: Galileo – Newton – Le Verrier – Einstein – General Relativity – Perihelion of Mercury – Law Hall’s law – Precession.