The Principia: The Authoritative Translation: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy - Hardcover

Newton, Isaac

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520290739 ISBN 13: 9780520290730

Publisher: California University Press, 2016

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

I. Bernard Cohen (1914-2003) was Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He was the author of Benjamin Franklin's Science, Interactions, and Science and the Founding Fathers. Anne Whitman (1937-1984) was coeditor (with I. Bernard Cohen and Alexander Koyre) of the Latin edition, with variant readings, of the Principia. Julia Budenz, author of From the Gardens of Flora Baum, is a multilingual classicist and poet.

From the Back Cover

"Using freshly conceived methods and tools of inquiry in his 1687 publication of Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton showed that the universe is knowable. But more importantly, he showed that the universe is predictable. We owe modern civilization to this towering genius of science."--Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History

"Newton's Principia Mathematica was the definitive achievement of seventeenth-century mathematics and natural philosophy. It has remained the indispensable foundation for all subsequent physical sciences. Thanks to this magnificent edition and detailed commentary, it has at long last become possible to make sense of that achievement in its own terms, and to follow exactly what it meant to its author and his readers. Lucid translation and the guide to the work's contents together offer an unmatched display of how the powers of mathematical reasoning and observational inquiry can help make sense of the system of the world."--Simon Schaffer, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

From the Inside Flap

"Using freshly conceived methods and tools of inquiry in his 1687 publication of Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton showed that the universe is knowable. But more importantly, he showed that the universe is predictable. We owe modern civilization to this towering genius of science."—Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History

"Newton's Principia Mathematica was the definitive achievement of seventeenth-century mathematics and natural philosophy. It has remained the indispensable foundation for all subsequent physical sciences. Thanks to this magnificent edition and detailed commentary, it has at long last become possible to make sense of that achievement in its own terms, and to follow exactly what it meant to its author and his readers. Lucid translation and the guide to the work's contents together offer an unmatched display of how the powers of mathematical reasoning and observational inquiry can help make sense of the system of the world."—Simon Schaffer, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Principia

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

By Isaac Newton, I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 1999 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-29073-0

Contents

Publisher's Note, 
Preface to the 1999 Edition, 
A Brief History of the Principia, 
The Principia (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), 
Halley's Ode to Newton, 
Newton's Preface to the First Edition, 
Newton's Preface to the Second Edition, 
Cotes's Preface to the Second Edition, 
Newton's Preface to the Third Edition, 
Definitions, 
Axioms, or the Laws of Motion, 
Book 1: The Motion of Bodies, 
Book 2: The Motion of Bodies, 
Book 3: The System of The World, 
General Scholium, 
Notes, 
Notes Added in Second Printing, 

CHAPTER 1

A Brief History of the Principia

The Origins of the Principia

Isaac Newton's Principia was published in 1687. The full title is Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. A revised edition appeared in 1713, followed by a third edition in 1726, just one year before the author's death in 1727. The subject of this work, to use the name assigned by Newton in the first preface, is "rational mechanics." Later on, Leibniz introduced the name "dynamics." Although Newton objected to this name, "dynamics" provides an appropriate designation of the subject matter of the Principia, since "force" is a primary concept of that work. Indeed, the Principia can quite properly be described as a study of a variety of forces and the different kinds of motions they produce. Newton's eventual goal, achieved in the third of the three "books" of which the Principia is composed, was to apply the results of the prior study to the system of the world, to the motions of the heavenly bodies. This subject is generally known today by the name used a century or so later by Laplace, "celestial mechanics."

The history of how the Principia came into being has been told and retold. In the summer of 1684, the astronomer Edmond Halley visited Newton in order to find out whether he could solve a problem that had baffled Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, and himself: to find the planetary orbit that would be produced by an inverse-square central force. Newton knew the answer to be an ellipse. He had solved the problem of elliptical orbits earlier, apparently in the period 1679–1680 during the course of an exchange of letters with Hooke. When Halley heard Newton's reply, he urged him to write up his results. With Halley's prodding and encouragement, Newton produced a short tract which exists in several versions and will be referred to as De Motu (On Motion), the common beginning of all the titles Newton gave to the several versions. Once started, Newton could not restrain the creative force of his genius, and the end product was the Principia. In his progress from the early versions of De Motu to the Principia, Newton's conception of what could be achieved by an empirically based mathematical science had become enlarged by several orders of magnitude.

As first conceived, the Principia consisted of two "books" and bore the simple title De Motu Corporum (On the Motion of Bodies). This manuscript begins, as does the Principia, with a series of Definitions and Laws of Motion, followed by a book 1 whose subject matter more or less corresponds to book 1 of the Principia. The subjec

Edition details

• Publisher: California University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520290739
• ISBN 13: 9780520290730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 616