[marcosdumay]

> Why can we even write equations for this stuff.

It's a (very) weird way to write the same equations as Newton. It happens to be easier to solve on some cases, because calculus works like that.

It's conceptually not very different from using a Fourier or Laplace transformation to simplify some signal handling. But 400 years ago they didn't have any easy way to understand it, so it got an aura of magic that never got away.

(But you probably already know all that. You probably just didn't internalize it because of that aura.)