What is a dynamometer? A simple way to construct one is to use a spring and mark equally-spaced lines to indicate how far the spring has stretched. You can then place a "mass" on the end of the spring and measure the spring's stretch by counting lines. You then say that "force is the change in the number of lines," but by doing this you are implicitly assuming that Hooke's law holds (that f = k x). All of physics is a bunch of definitions and equations piled up on top of each other that are self-consistent and that explain what we see in the natural world. They are human constructions.
Indeed, in another planet perhaps the scientists are underwater barnacle-like beings, so they have no force sensors in their non-existent arm muscles, never invented the lever (and balance scales), pulley, and inclined planes, and never noticed of Hooke's law; until one of them defined force by f = ma and went on to find that this abstract concept obeyed many interestting properties, including Hooke's law and weight = g m.
But that is not how things happened on this planet, sorry.
Satoshi Nakamoto once said [ ... ] When Newton wrote "Principia," he planted the seeds that would change mankind's perception of reality over the next several hundred years. When Satoshi wrote "Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system," I would argue that he did the same thing.
I think if you were alive in the days of Newton, you would have been a bishop of the Catholic Church.
Wait, I thought that I was the lone odious heretic in this thread who dared to question the Holy Words of Satoshi (as properly corrected, expanded and interpreted by the numerous Reverend Fathers of the Holy Church of Bitcoin, who, according to themselves, were appointed by Him to spread the Word and prepare mankind for His triumphant Second Coming).
