Newton's second law assumes no dissipation. Force equals mass times acceleration, with no term for energy lost to the environment during acceleration itself. Real systems dissipate — friction, radiation, internal degrees of freedom — but dissipation is added to Newtonian mechanics as an external correction, not derived from within it.
The paper inverts this. Starting from a thermodynamic framework where dissipation is fundamental, Newtonian mechanics emerges as the zero-dissipation limit. The dissipative theory is the general case; ideal Newtonian dynamics is the special case where dissipation happens to vanish.
The framework predicts a specific dissipative component in momentum that scales with applied force. The resulting damping coefficient has a definite relationship to the inertial mass and system parameters — not a free parameter to be fitted, but a consequence of the thermodynamic structure. The prediction is experimentally testable: a torsion balance with adjustable moment of inertia should reveal the force-dependent dissipation if it exists.
The approach also recovers known results: the Eliezer-Ford-O'Connell radiation reaction equation emerges naturally, without the conceptual difficulties of the standard derivation (pre-acceleration, runaway solutions). These pathologies of the standard treatment arise from trying to add radiation reaction to a framework that assumed no dissipation from the start. Starting from dissipation and removing it in a controlled limit avoids the pathologies because the limit is regular.
The structural claim: ideal mechanics is not the foundation with dissipation added on top. Dissipation is the foundation, and ideal mechanics is the simplification.