Physical Constants that aren't
As the Royal Society's motto advises: Nullum in Verbo (‘take nobody's word for it'). Not everything that's taken as scientific fact has been verified by experiment. There are exceptions chief among which must be belief in a pull of gravity. Newton chose not to challenge the classic doctrine set by Aristotle but to rationalise it with this theory, in spite of earlier support for Hooke's external force. It is often likened to suction, which is demonstrably not a pull but dependent on a difference in environmental pressure. Nor are there grounds for claiming a universal constant for it as a basis for other theory. It was C.V. Boys, a century and a half afterNewton, who put a value on the factor G in the inverse-square law, which he based on a measurement of the Earth's mass.Newtonhimself didn't claim a constant value, only that interacting forces between the Earth and the Moon matched "nearly enough" for it to be considered a common force....
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