This paper has the aim to provide a general view of the so called Jesuit Edition (hereafter JE) of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1739–1742). This edition was conceived to explain all Newton’s methods through an apparatus of notes and commentaries. Every Newton’s proposition is annotated. Because of this, the text – in four volumes – is one of the most important documents to understand Newton’s way of reasoning. This edition is well (...) known, but systematic works on it are still missing. We are going to fill this gap by means of a project exposed in the final remarks of this paper. In this paper we will: A) expound the way in which the notes and the additions to the JE were conceived by the commentators; B) provide some pieces of information about the commentators; C) summarize the most important of their notes; D) examine closely their notes as to a particularly important question: the so called "inverse problem of the central forces". (shrink)

In this research, we present the most important characteristics of the so called and so much explored Jesuit Edition of Newton’s Philosophi? Naturalis Principia Mathematica edited by Thomas Le Seur and Fran?ois Jacquier in the 1739-1742. The edition, densely annotated by the commentators (the notes and the comments are longer than Newton’s text itself) is a very treasure concerning Newton’s ideas and his heritage, e.g., Newton’s geometry and mathematical physics. Conspicuous pieces of information (...) as to history of physics, history of mathematics and epistemology can be drawn from it. This paper opens a series of study concerning Jesuit Edition, whose final scope is to put in evidence all the conceptual aspects of such edition and its role inside the spread of scientific ideas and inside the complex relation science, popularization & society. (shrink)

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) left a voluminous legacy of writings. Despite his influence on the early modern period, his correspondence, manuscripts, and publications in natural philosophy remain scattered throughout many disparate editions. In this volume, Newton's principal philosophical writings are for the first time collected in a single place. They include excerpts from the Principia and the Opticks, his famous correspondence with Boyle and with Bentley, and his equally significant correspondence with Leibniz, which is often ignored in favor (...) of Leibniz's later debate with Samuel Clarke. Newton's exchanges with Leibniz place their different understandings of natural philosophy in sharp relief. The volume also includes 'De Gravitatione', offered here in a corrected translation, which is crucial for understanding Newton's relation to his great predecessor Descartes. In a historical and philosophical introduction, Andrew Janiak examines Newton's philosophical positions and his relations to canonical figures in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In his new introduction to this current edition of this classic in the field originally published in 1982 (Humanities Press), Hoppe (economics, U. of Nevada, Las Vegas--as was the late author) extols Rothbard's marriage of the "value-free" science of economics with the normative enterprise of ethics and their offspring: libertarianism. Discussion areas are: natural law, a theory of liberty, the state vs. liberty, modern alternative theories of liberty, and toward a theory of strategy for liberty. Annotation copyrighted by Book (...) News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

In his monumental 1687 work, _Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica_, known familiarly as the _Principia_, Isaac Newton laid out in mathematical terms the principles of time, force, and motion that have guided the development of modern physical science. Even after more than three centuries and the revolutions of Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics continues to account for many of the phenomena of the observed world, and Newtonian celestial dynamics is used to determine the orbits of our space vehicles. (...) This authoritative, modern translation by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, the first in more than 285 years, is based on the 1726 edition, the final revised version approved by Newton; it includes extracts from the earlier editions, corrects errors found in earlier versions, and replaces archaic English with contemporary prose and up-to-date mathematical forms. Newton's principles describe acceleration, deceleration, and inertial movement; fluid dynamics; and the motions of the earth, moon, planets, and comets. A great work in itself, the _Principia_ also revolutionized the methods of scientific investigation. It set forth the fundamental three laws of motion and the law of universal gravity, the physical principles that account for the Copernican system of the world as emended by Kepler, thus effectively ending controversy concerning the Copernican planetary system. The translation-only edition of this preeminent work is truly accessible for today's scientists, scholars, and students. (shrink)

Setting Out on the Great Way: Essays on Early Mahayana Buddhism, edited by Paul Harrison. Equinox Publications, 2018. 320pp. Hb. £75.00, Pb/eBook. £26.99. ISBN-13: Hb. 9781781790960, Pb. 9781781798539, eBook 9781781796856.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1915 Edition.

_Early Psychoanalytic Religious Writings_ presents, in one edited volume, many of the foundational writings in the psychoanalytic study of religion. These translated works by Abraham, Fromm, Pfister, and others, complement Freud’s seminal contributions and provide a unique window into the origins of psychoanalytic thinking.

SummaryThis contribution examines the circumstances of composition of the annotated edition of Newton's Principia that was printed in Geneva in 1739–1742, which ran to several editions and was still in print in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century. This edition was the work of the Genevan Professor of Mathematics, Jean Louis Calandrini, and of two Minim friars based in Rome, Thomas Le Seur and François Jacquier. The study of the context in which this edition was conceived sheds (...) light on the early reception of Newtonianism in Geneva and Rome. By taking into consideration the careers of Calandrini, Le Seur and Jacquier, as authors, lecturers and leading characters of Genevan and Roman cultural life, I will show that their involvement in the enterprise of annotating Newton's Principia answered specific needs of Genevan and Roman culture. The publication and reception of the Genevan annotated edition has also a broader European dimension. Both Calandrini and Jacquier were in touch with the French république des lettres, most notably with Clairaut and Du Châtelet, and with the Bernoulli family in Basel. Therefore, this study is also relevant for the understanding of the dissemination of Newton's ideas in Europe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian SocietiesE. N. AndersonHealing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies. Edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2001. Pp. xiii + 283. Hardcover.Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies, edited by Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel, consists of an Introduction, by (...) the first editor, and eleven case studies. The latter are short ethnographic studies of particular communities or healers in East and South Asian countries. All of these are well-written, detailed accounts of particular healing contexts and behaviors. Several are by first-rate veteran ethnographers, such as Laurel Kendall (writing-as usual-on Korean shamans), Mark Nichter (India), Carol Laderman (Malaya), and Geoffrey Samuel (Tibet). Others are by younger scholars, such as Amanda Harris (the Iban of Sarawak), who are carrying on the great tradition. Other essays by Kalpana Ram (India), Marina Roseman (the Temiar of Malaya), Cynthia Hunter (Indonesia), Sydney White (the Naxi of China), Craig Janes (Tibet), and Vincanne Adams (Tibet) complete the picture. All are fine ethnographic sketches.The unifying theme is a classic anthropological one: traditional, small-scale, indigenous traditions meet international forces of change. Inevitably, the former must accommodate to the overwhelmingly greater wealth and power of the agents of the latter. In the medical arena, nations often push international biomedicine to the exclusion of other modes. In the nations under study here, things are a bit more complex; all have their own elite medical traditions, some much changed by contact with biomedicine (as in the case of China's "Traditional Chinese Medicine," with capital letters; it is a new invention, in spite of the name). So local indigenous healers have to accommodate not only to some much-altered form of biomedicine; they usually have to accommodate also to some much-altered form of their country's elite medicine. They improvise, often with striking success. The spirits of the forest are joined by the spirit of canned sardines (see Roseman's chapter), but spiritual healing practice continues.Naturally, this is confusing, and here the book begins to break down a bit. "Modernity" as a concept is taken over from the writings of Foucault, de Certeau, Homi Bhabha, and the like, which are by no means consistent or clear on its meaning. And the authors of this book are far too sophisticated to think of "modernity" as any one thing or as anything at all simple. They are, perforce, left to say that modernity-especially as written up at enormous length and vagueness in the works of the authorities cited-is too complex to address here. (Someone more irreverent might even suggest that "modernity," if indeed it cannot be tightly defined, is not a concept worthy of much attention.) This leaves the book rather undertheorized.Moreover, the authors follow the aforementioned authorities in leaving out bio-scientific considerations, even from descriptions of local modernizing discourses. One wishes for some biomedical diagnoses of cases, for example, for background data on disease incidence, infant and maternal mortality, nutrition, and other basic health concerns. [End Page 702]A reviewer usually should not complain about what is not treated in a book, but in some cases here, stories really need rounding out. Laurel Kendall speaks of Korean folkloristic interest in shamans, but does not mention the fascinating and hotly debated ideas about shamanism as the fount of Korean morality and fine art. Geoffrey Samuel puts discussion of China's brutal crushing of Tibetans and their culture "beyond the scope of this chapter" (p. 215), which deprives the reader of serious consideration of the most obtrusive force shaping Tibetan medical practice today.Such quibbles are minor. These compelling studies of local healers caught in global currents can stand on their own. [End Page 703]E. N. AndersonUniversity of California, RiversideCopyright © 2006 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophers and the Bible: The Debate on Sacred Scripture in Early Modern Thought ed. by Antonella Del Prete, Anna Lisa Schino, and Pina TotaroPiet SteenbakkersAntonella Del Prete, Anna Lisa Schino, and Pina Totaro, editors. The Philosophers and the Bible: The Debate on Sacred Scripture in Early Modern Thought. Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 333. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xiv + 303. Hardback, €135.16.This volume has its origins (...) in an international conference held in May 2019 in Rome and Viterbo. In its scope and approach, it surpasses the average volume of conference proceedings, owing to the editors' wise decision to invite additional papers to enhance its thematic coherence. Even with this expansion, they managed to get the book published within fifteen months—a remarkable achievement. Apart from chapters 12 and 13, which are in French, the volume is entirely in English. Most authors are proficient enough, but there are occasional slips, for instance, redundant definite articles ("the scripture" [61], "truths of the faith" [251]) or mistranslations ("prevent men from attacking and killing themselves" instead of "… killing each other" [87]).The generous bibliographies, one for every chapter, are a treasure trove. They are up to date and mostly well balanced. Taking into account that all but two of the authors are Italian, the literature referred to is impressively international in scope—more so than one usually sees in edited volumes, where English rules supreme. Chapters 1 and 3, which deal with Italian philosophers, have few non-Italian titles, and chapter 9 (on Pascal) few non-French titles.Textbook histories of philosophy pay little or no attention to what philosophers have said about the Bible: as a matter of course, the subject is assigned to the realm of theology and religion. As the editors rightly point out in their introduction (1–2), that is to ignore the massive presence of Scripture in Western culture. They even speak of the "biblical foundations" of early modern and contemporary thought (2). While that appraisal may seem exaggerated, they certainly have a point when they insist on the far-reaching and lasting influence of the Bible on Western thought—science and philosophy included. That the subject has been overlooked by historians of philosophy may in part be due to the academic division of labor with its rigid demarcations between disciplines and a near absolute divide between sciences and humanities. This distorts our view of the early modern period, when these qualifications had not yet been coined and demarcations between what would become separate disciplines were altogether fluid. Those who are now called "scientists" were formerly known as "natural philosophers." The present volume therefore deals not only with [End Page 325] Ficino, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Conway, Pascal, Wolff, and other thinkers now primarily classified as philosophers, but also with Galileo (though not directly addressed, "the 'Galileo affair' constitutes the background of the book" [8]), Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, as well as with influential figures who defy our habitual classifications, for example, Biddle or Mersenne. The book boldly situates itself in what has gradually become a broad tradition of interdisciplinary scholarship, cultivated by luminaries such as Eugenio Garin, Paul O. Kristeller, Amos Funkenstein, and Anthony Grafton.The subtitle of the book, The Debate on Sacred Scripture in Early Modern Thought, may conjure up images of a historical debate among philosophers, along the lines of, say, the German Pantheismusstreit (pantheism dispute) of the 1780s. A curious aspect of the involvement of philosophers (in the broadest sense) in matters related to the Bible, however, is that the "debate" was a confrontation of philosophers with theologians, clerics, ecclesiastical and very often also civil authorities, rather than a mere philosophical dispute. This also means that individual philosophers' freedom of expression varied considerably depending on their denomination and environment. Thus, Galileo clashed head-on with the Roman Catholic Church, Descartes sought the approbation of the theologians of the Sorbonne, the Jesuits who inveighed against Pascal did so with little or no interest in the biblical text (see D'Agostino's chapter 9, 169). The Reformation took the Word of God for its foundation, so that Protestant settings (England, the Dutch Republic, and the Lutheran countries) were... (shrink)

Tijekom svoje kratke filozofske profesure na Bečkom sveučilištu i u plemićkom zavodu Collegium Theresianum , ali i potom dok je bio profesorom teologije u Beču, isusovac Josip Zanchi, riječki plemić, četiri je puta tiskao svoj udžbenik Physica particularis, koji je sadržavao raspravu iz meteorologije. U svim je tim izdanjima izlaganje o uzroku dúge započeo povijesnom bilješkom, u kojoj je sažeto prikazao de Dominisov, Descartesov i Newtonov doprinos objašnjenju dúge. Potraga za Zanchijevim izvorom u optičkim i prirodnofilozofskim djelima objavljenim nakon Newtonova (...) djela Opticks otkrila je tri newtonovca koji su također spomenuli de Dominisa: Henryja Pembertona, Voltairea i Antonija Genovesija. Njima treba pridodati i četvrtoga: Pietera van Musschenbroeka, koji je de Dominisovu ulogu u povijesti istraživanja dúge opisao pod Genovesijevim utjecajem, ali tek u posmrtno objavljenom djelu Introductio ad philosophiam naturalem .Pri sastavljaju svoje povijesne bilješke o istraživanju dúge Josip Zanchi slijedio je Newtona ili nekog newtonovca. Tvrdio je više od Newtona jer je za njega de Dominis »prvi od svih otkrio pravi uzrok dúge«, pri čem je oprezno dometnuo videtur, a objektivnije je od Newtona i nekih newtonovaca opisao Descartesov doprinos. Kad je pak studentima objašnjavao dúgu, slijedio je posljednju riječ znanosti – Newtona.Uporabom Zanchijeva udžbenika Physica particularis s de Dominisovim optičkim i meteorološkim prinosom mogli su se susresti profesori i studenti filozofije i u Hrvatskoj. Taj su udžbenik posjedovale knjižnice na dvama isusovačkim filozofskim učilištima: u Zagrebačkom kolegiju najkasnije od 1758., a u Požeškom kolegiju najkasnije od 1769. godine.While teaching philosophy at the University of Vienna and the elite school Collegium Theresianum , but also theology in the same city, Josip Zanchi, Jesuit of noble birth from Rijeka, had published four editions of his manual Physica particularis, containing also a most comprehensive meteorological treatise. In each of the four Vienna editions his elaboration on the cause of rainbow opens a historical paragraph comprising a short survey of de Dominis’, Descartes’ and Newton’s contributions to the explanation of rainbow. Search for Zanchi’s source in the works dealing with natural philosophy published after Newton’s Opticks has brought to light three Newtonians who also mentioned de Dominis: Henry Pemberton, Voltaire and Antonio Genovesi. The name of Pieter van Musschenbroek should be added to this list. He described de Dominis’ role in the history of the explanation of rainbow under the influence of Genovesi, published posthumously in his work Introductio ad philosophiam naturalem .While composing his historical paragraph on the explanation of rainbow, Josip Zanchi followed in the footsteps of Newton or a Newtonian. He exceeded Newton by stating that de Dominis was »the first to have discovered the true cause of rainbow,« carefully employing videtur in support of his argument, his description of Descartes’ contribution being more objective than that of Newton or some Newtonians. However, in his academic lectures on rainbow, he followed the latest scientific discoveries – Newton.Through Zanchi’s manual Physica particularis, Croatian professors and students of philosophy could also have become familiar with de Dominis’ optical and meteorological contribution. This manual was available in the libraries of two Jesuit philosophical schools: Zagreb College or Collegium Zagrabiense, not later than 1758, and in Požega College or Collegium Poseganum, from 1769 at the latest. (shrink)

Based on our research regarding the relationship between physics and mathematics in HPS, and recently on Geneva Edition of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1739–42) by Thomas Le Seur (1703–70) and François Jacquier (1711–88), in this paper we present some aspects of such Edition: a combination of editorial features and scientific aims. The proof of Proposition XLIII is presented and commented as a case study.

To solve the direct problem of central forces when the trajectory is an ellipse and the force is directed to its centre, Newton made use of the famous Lemma 12 (Principia, I, sect. II) that was later recognized equivalent to proposition 31 of book VII of Apollonius’s Conics. In this paper, in which we look for Newton’s possible sources for Lemma 12, we compare Apollonius’s original proof, as edited by Borelli, with those of other authors, including that given (...) by Newton himself. Moreover, after having retraced its editorial history, we evaluate the dissemination of Borelli's edition of books V-VII of Apollonius’s Conics before the printing of the Principia. (shrink)

In this article, we document how, in the public arena, British readers of the first edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687) tried to make sense of the relation between gravity, matter, and divine and natural causation—an issue on which Newton had remained entirely silent in the first edition of the Principia. We show that readers attached new meanings to the Principia so that parts of it migrated to a different intellectual debate. It will (...) be shown that one particular result Newton obtained in the Principia, namely the rejection of a vacuum in Corollary 3 to Proposition 6 in Book 3, was the most important locus in debates on the relation between gravity, matter, and causation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to show the principal aspects of the way in which Newton conceived his mathematical concepts and methods and applied them to rational mechanics in his Principia; (2) to explain how the editors of the Geneva Edition interpreted, clarified, and made accessible to a broader public Newton’s perfect but often elliptic proofs. Following this line of inquiry, we will explain the successes of Newton’s mechanics, but also the problematic aspects (...) of his perfect geometrical methods, more elegant, but less malleable than analytical procedures, of which Newton himself was one of the inventors. Furthermore, we will also consider the way in which Newtonianism was spread before in England and afterwards on continental Europe. In this respect the Geneva Edition plays a fundamental role because of its complete apparatus of notes, and because it appeared only thirteen years after the publication of the third edition of the Principia (1726). Finally, we will also confront some problems connected to the metaphysics of calculus. Therefore, the case of Newton is one of those in which, starting from mathematics applied to physics, it is possible to connect an impressive series of fundamental arguments such as the role of mathematics in science; the comparison between Newton’s geometrical methods and analytical methods; the way in which Newtonianism was spread as well as the philosophical implications of Newton’s mathematical concepts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT When Henry Macomber published his census of owners of the first edition of the Principia in 1953, he believed the edition to be small, ‘perhaps not more than 250 copies’, an estimate that still enjoys currency. Lower estimates of the size of the first edition of the Principia were based partly on assessments regarding an inhospitable market for highly technical mathematical books, and partly on the presumption that the vaunted incomprehensibility of the Principia would have militated (...) against a sizeable edition. Our preliminary census more than doubles the number of identified copies, to 387—suggesting a much larger print run than commonly assumed – as well as encourages us to believe that there existed a wider, and competent, readership of the Principia from the start. The long-standing assumption regarding the recondite nature of Newton's science as presented in the Principia, together with claims concerning the scarcity of the book, brought many scholars to assume that Newton's masterpiece exerted little influence before the 1730s. The new empirical evidence presented in our census enables a reassessment of the early diffusion of the Principia in Europe which, in turn, would necessitate a major refinement of our understanding of the contribution of Newtonianism to Enlightenment science. (shrink)

Although considered as the end of the Late Scholasticism, in Central Europe the 18th century still bore the substance of philosophical thinking and education of the Jesuit baroque philosophy, especially its ideal of building study societies and classical libraries accompanied by astronomical observatories and scientific collections. The Jesuit model of Eger was brought by the Transylvanian Bishop Ignatius Batthyány at Alba Iulia where he has established a learning place consisting in a classical and theological library and founded a (...) literary society, trained a professional librarian and aimed at offering a study place for meritory scholars. He was himself a theologian, paleographer and historian, edited and commented on the treatise Deliberatio supra hymnum trium puerorum ad Isingrimum liberalem by the 11th century Benedictine Bishop Gerardus of Cenad. Bishop Batthyány was for many reasons a baroque scholar although many times introduced as a man of Enlightenment by some historians. (shrink)

Newton's Principia begins with eight formal definitions and a scholium, the so-called scholium on space and time. Despite a history of misinterpretation, scholars now largely agree that the purpose of the scholium is to establish and defend the de fi nitions of key concepts. There is no consensus, however, on how those definitions differ in kind from the Principia's formal definitions and why they are set-off in a scholium. The purpose of the present essay is to shed light on (...) the scholium by focusing on Newton's notion and use of de fi nition. The resulting view is developmental. I argue that when Newton first wrote the Principia, he viewed the scholium's definitions as items of “natural philosophy.” By the time of the third edition, however, he came to view their methodological status differently; he viewed them as belonging to the more qualified “manner of geometers.” I explicate the two methods of natural inquiry and draw out their implications for Newton's account of space. (shrink)

Scholars have long recognized that Newton regarded Descartes as his principal philosophical interlocutor when composing the first edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. The arguments in the Scholium on space and time, for instance, can profitably be interpreted as focusing on the conception of space and motion in part two of Descartes's Principles of Philosophy (1644). What is less well known, however, is that this Cartesian conception, along with Descartes's attempt to avoid Galileo's fate in 1633, (...) serves as an essential background to understanding Newton's own (poorly understood) view of the theological implications of his theory of space and motion. In particular, after withdrawing Le Monde from publication in 1633 because of its Copernican leanings, Descartes later introduced what some regard as a “fudge factor” into the theory of motion in the Principles: from an ordinary perspective the earth does move; but from a philosophical one, it does not. This background indicates the novelty and originality of Newton's own attempt to explicate how scriptural passages concerning the motions of the heavenly bodies can be reconciled with the philosophical views he developed during the 1680s. New evidence from archival sources and correspondence supports this argument, shedding light on the Scholium and on Newton's conception of philosophy's relation to theology. (shrink)

For about the last thirty years Newton scholars have carried on a discussion on the meaning of Newton’s second law and its place in the stucture of his physics. E. J. Dijksterhuis, Brian D. Ellis, R. G. A. Dolby, I. Bernard Cohen, and R. S. Westfall in their treatments of these matters all quote a passage that Newton added to the third edition of the Principia. This passage, beginning “Corpore cadente” (“when a body is falling”), was (...) inserted into the Scholium following the Laws. The present article is an analysis of the literature that treats this passage and its relation to the second law. The conclusion is that they are right who see a deep duality in Newton’s mind regarding this law. (shrink)

Contrary to the received opinion, the fundamentals of Newton's dynamics can be set forth quite simply. In the first edition of the Principia, Newton employs a device that relates to Galileo's analysis of uniform rectilinear motion. In the second and third editions, Newton introduces an alternate device that relates to Huygens's analysis of uniform circular motion. A third device is also introduced but is hidden away as a corollary to a problem rather than set forth clearly (...) as a theorem. Following the appearance of the first edition, Newton proposed, but never published, a grand new scheme for revising his dynamics in which he clearly set forth each dynamics ratio with a complementary set of solutions to the problems. As published, however, the alternate methods are not clear and are a source more of confusion than of clarification. (shrink)

Teaching Newtonian physics involves the replacement of students’ ideas about physical situations with precise concepts appropriate for mathematical applications. This paper focuses on the concepts of ‘matter’ and ‘mass’. We suggest that students, like some pre-Newtonian scientists we examine, use these terms in a way that conflicts with their Newtonian meaning. Specifically, ‘matter’ and ‘mass’ indicate to them the sorts of things that are tangible, bulky, and take up space. In Newtonian mechanics, however, the terms are defined by Newton’s (...) Second Law: ‘mass’ is simply a measure of the acceleration generated by an impressed force. We examine the relationship between these conceptions as it was discussed by Newton and his editor, Roger Cotes, when analyzing a series of pendulum experiments. We suggest that these experiments, as well as more sophisticated computer simulations, can be used in the classroom to sufficiently differentiate the colloquial and precise meaning of these terms. (shrink)

The Newtonian research program consists of the core axioms of the Principia Mathematica, a sequence of force laws and auxiliary hypotheses, and a set of methodological rules. The latter underwent several changes and so it is sometimes claimed that, historically seen, Newton and the Newtonians added methodological rules post constructione in order to further support their research agenda. An argument of Duhem, Feyerabend, and Lakatos aims to provide a theoretical reason why Newton could not have come up with (...) his theory of the Principia in accordance with his own methodology: Since Newton’s starting point, Kepler’s laws, contradict the law of universal gravitation, he could not have applied the so-called method of analysis and synthesis. In this paper, this argument is examined with reference to the Principia’s several editions. Newton’s method is characterized, and necessary general background assumptions of the argument are made explicit. Finally, the argument is criticized based on a contemporary philosophy of science point of view. (shrink)

This chapter explains what Isaac Newton means with the phrase “absolute, true, and mathematical time” in order to discuss some of the philosophic issues that it gives rise to. It describes Newton's thought in light of a number of scientific, technological, and metaphysical issues that arose in seventeenth‐century natural philosophy. The first section discusses some of the relevant context from the history of Galilean, mathematical natural philosophy, especially as exhibited by the work of Christiaan Huygens. The second section (...) offers a close reading of what Newton says about time in the Principia's Scholium to the definitions. It argues that Newton allows us to conceptually distinguish between “true” and “absolute” time from the vantage point of Newton's dynamics. The third section, in the context of a brief account of Descartes' views on time, discusses the material that Newton added to the second edition of the Principia in the General Scholium. (shrink)

This addresses the transformations of metaphysics as a discipline, the emergence of analytical mechanics, the diverging avenues of 18th-century Newtonianism, the body-mind problem, and philosophical principles of classification in the life sciences. An appendix contains a critical edition and first translation into English of Newton's scholia from David Gregory's Estate on the Propositions IV through IX Book III of his Principia.

Sir Isaac Newton left a voluminous legacy of writings. Despite his influence on the early modern period, his correspondence, manuscripts, and publications in natural philosophy remain scattered throughout many disparate editions. In this volume, Newton's principal philosophical writings are for the first time collected in a single place. They include excerpts from the Principia and the Opticks, his famous correspondence with Boyle and with Bentley, and his equally significant correspondence with Leibniz, which is often ignored in favor of (...) Leibniz's later debate with Samuel Clarke. Newton's exchanges with Leibniz place their different understandings of natural philosophy in sharp relief. The volume also includes 'De Gravitatione', offered here in a corrected translation, which is crucial for understanding Newton's relation to his great predecessor Descartes. In a historical and philosophical introduction, Andrew Janiak examines Newton's philosophical positions and his relations to canonical figures in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Manuscript Add. 3965, section 13, folios 541r–542r and 545r–546r is in the Portsmouth Collection of manuscripts and housed in the University Library, Cambridge. These drafts contain a careful account, in Newton's hand, of his views on place, time, and God. They are part of a large number of drafts relating to the three official editions of the Principia published in Newton's lifetime.

We argue that a conflict between two conceptions of “quantity of matter” employed in a corollary to proposition 6 of Book III of the Principia illustrates a deeper conflict between Newton’s view of the nature of extended bodies and the concept of mass appropriate for the theoretical framework of the Principia. We trace Newton’s failure to recognize the conflict to the fact that he allowed for the justification of natural philosophical claims by two types of a posteriori, empiricist (...) methodologies. Newton's thoughts on these methodologies demonstrate that his natural philosophy continued to develop after the publication of the first edition of Principia and that De Grav should be understood as an early, and not necessarily representative, text. (shrink)

This long-awaited volume completes Alan Shapiro’s project of publishing Newton’s papers on optics (including the Opticks itself in its various forms). Like the first volume, this second and final v...

By a simple revision of Newton's diagram for Proposition 6 of the third edition of the Principia, one can see directly how the mathematics of uniform circular motion have been employed to solve the Kepler problem of elliptical planetary motion in Proposition 11. Newton strove initially to build his dynamics on the linear kinematics of Galileo; and, in this utilization of uniformly accelerated linear motion to solve more complicated problems, he can be seen as revolutionary. But he (...) could not escape completely from the coils of celestial circularity, and in his utilization of uniform circular motion to solve problems of elliptical motion, he can be seen as reactionary. The key to understanding Newton's mature dynamics resides in the discussion of the alternate dynamics ratio, as presented here in section six. (shrink)