======== Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica ======== 

Sir Isaac Newton, Andrew Motte, Florian Cajori

University of California Press, 1934 

About the author (1934)

Born at Woolsthorpe, England, Sir Isaac Newton was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he graduated in 1665. During the plague of 1666, he remained at Woolsthorpe, during which time he formulated his theory of fluxions (the infinitesimal calculus) and the main outlines of his theories of mechanics, astronomy, and optics, including the theory of universal gravitation. The results of his researches were not circulated until 1669, but when he returned to Trinity in 1667, he was immediately appointed to succeed his teacher as professor of mathematics. His greatest work, the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, was published in 1687 to immediate and universal acclaim. Newton was elected to Parliament in 1689. In 1699, he was appointed head of the royal mint, and four years later he was elected president of the Royal Society; both positions he held until his death. Personally, Newton was shy, reserved, and humorless, as well as ambitious, jealous, and quarrelsome. He preferred to engage in polemics by proxy. In later life, Newton devoted his main intellectual energies to theological speculation and alchemical experiments. The latter were apparently without result, and the former were deliberately left in obscurity because of Newton's unorthodox anti-Trinitarian views. The philosophical foundations of Newton's physical theory, as seen by its creator, have been a matter of speculation. From the eighteenth century onward, it was customary to interpret Newton as a modest empiricist: his remark in the Mathematical Principles that he "does not feign hypotheses" regarding the cause of gravity has usually been read in this way. But twentieth-century scholarship has suggested a different view. It appears that Newton was convinced that there had to be a mechanistic explanation of gravitational attraction but was frustrated in his attempts to provide one. However, Newton opposed Cartesian physics because he thought it too materialistic; Newton denied the principle of conservation of energy, believing that divine design, and even direct divine influence in the world, was required to account for the origin and stability of the solar system and to prevent the stars from collapsing into a single mass under the influence of gravity.


Title	Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica

Authors	Sir Isaac Newton, Andrew Motte, Florian Cajori

Editors	Florian Cajori, Russell Tracy Crawford

Translated by	Andrew Motte, Florian Cajori

Contributor	Florian Cajori

Edition	reprint

Publisher	University of California Press, 1934

ISBN	0520009274, 9780520009271

Length	680 pages

Subjects:
Celestial mechanics
Light, Wave theory of
Mathematics / General
Mathematics / History & Philosophy
Mechanics
Mechanics, Celestial
Optics
Refraction, Double
Science / General
Science / History
Science / Mechanics / General