The First Law
It is often said that Newton’s first law of motion is redundant. It is just a special case of the second law.This ignores the historical context. Until Newton put his quill to the parchment, “Natural Motion” was a circle. Even the Great Galileo went to his grave, believing this to be true. He espoused the cycles and epicycles of the Copernican cosmos but Keppler’s ellipses were anathema.
The straight line of the law was the last nail in the coffin of Aristotelian physics. The logical extension of calling it redundant would be to declare all three laws redundant. They are “just” special cases of the law of conservation of momentum.
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