Please note that once we establish an etalon for the mass3, e.g.

define 1 kg as the mass of one cubic decimeter of water 4, the

fact 2 serves us also as the definitions of the mass of a body,
and of the magnitude of a force. Indeed, if we have a fixed ref-
erence force which is (a) guaranteed to have always the same
magnitude, and (b) can be applied to an arbitrary body (e.g.
a spring deformed by a given amount) then we can define the
mass of any other body in kilograms numerically equal to the
ratio of its acceleration to the acceleration of the etalon when
the both bodies are subject to the reference force. Newton’s
2nd law is valid if this is a self-consistent definition, i.e. if the
obtained mass is independent of what reference force was used.
Similarly, the magnitude of any force in Newtons (denoted as
N _ kgm/s2) can be defined to be equal to the product of
the mass and the acceleration of a body subject to that force;
Newton’s 2nd law is valid and this definition is self-consistent
if the result is independent of which test body was used.
To sum up: the Newton’s 2nd law ⃗F = m⃗a serves us both
as the definition of the mass of a body (assuming that we have
chosen a mass etalon), and the force of an interaction; the law
ensures that these are self-consistent definitions: the mass of
a body and the magnitude of a force are independent of the
measurement procedure.
fact 3: Forces are additive as vector quantities: if there are
many forces ⃗Fi (i = 1 . . . n) acting on a body of mass m then
the fact 2 remains valid with ⃗F = Σ
i
⃗Fi.
The vector sum Σ
i
⃗Fi can be calculated using either the tri-
angle/parallelogram rule, or component-wise arithmetic addi-
tion: Fx = Σ
i
⃗Fix, where an index x denotes the x-component
(projection onto the x-axis) of a vector; similar expressions can
be written for the y- and z-axis.
fact 4: Masses are additive as scalar quantities: if a body