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Preface to Isaac Newton's Principia (1687) |
In the publication of this work the most acute and universally learned Mr. Edmund Halley not only assisted me with his pains in correcting the press and taking care of the schemes, but it was to his solicitations that its becoming public is owing; for when he had obtained of me my demonstrations of the figure of the celestia1 orbits, he continually pressed me to communicate the same to the Roya1 Society, who afterwards, by their kind encouragement and entreaties, engaged me to think of publishing them. But after I had begun to consider the inequalities of the lunar motions, and had entered upon some other things relating to the laws and measures of gravity, and other forces; and the figures that would be described by bodies attracted according to given laws; and the motion of several bodies moving among themselves; the motion of bodies in resisting mediums; the forces, densities, and motions, of mediums; the orbits of the comets, and such like; deferred that publication till I had made a search into those matters, and could put forth the whole together. What relates to the lunar motions (being imperfect), I have put all together in the corollaries of Prop. 66, to avoid being obliged to propose and distinctly demonstrate the several things there contained in a method more prolix than the subject deserved, and interrupt the series of the several propositions. Some things, found out after the rest, I chose to insert in places less suitable, rather than change the number of the propositions and the citations. I heartily beg that what I have here done may be read with candour; and that the defects in a subject so difficult be not so much reprehended as kindly supplied, and investigated by new endeavours of my readers. [Source: Isaac Newton, Principia (1687), Translated by Andrew Motte (1729).] | The History Guide | | copyright � 2000 Steven Kreis |
Since the ancients (as we are told
by Pappas), made great account of the science of mechanics in the investigation of natural
things; and the moderns, lying aside substantial forms and occult qualities, have
endeavoured to subject the ph�nomena of nature to the laws of mathematics, I have in this
treatise cultivated mathematics so far as it regards philosophy. The ancients considered
mechanics in a twofold respect; as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration;
and practical. To practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which mechanics
took its name. But as artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it comes to pass that
mechanics is so distinguished from geometry, that what is perfectly accurate is called
geometrical; what is less so, is called mechanical. But the errors are not in the art, but
in the artificers. He that works with less accuracy is an imperfect mechanic; and if any
could work with perfect accuracy, he would be the most perfect mechanic of all; for the
description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to
mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn;
for it requires that the learner should first be taught to describe these accurately,
before he enters upon geometry; then it shows how by these operations problems may be
solved. To describe right lines and circles are problems, but not geometrical problems.
The solution of these problems is required from mechanics; and by geometry the use of
them, when so solved, is shown; and it is the glory of geometry that from those few
principles, brought from without, it is able to produce so many things. Therefore geometry
is founded in mechanical practice, and is nothing but that part of universal mechanics
which accurately proposes and demonstrates the art of measuring. But since the manual arts
are chiefly conversant in the moving of bodies, it comes to pass that geometry is commonly
referred to their magnitudes, and mechanics to their motion. In this sense rational
mechanics will be the science of motions resulting from any forces whatsoever, and of the
forces required to produce any motions, accurately proposed and demonstrated. This part of
mechanics was cultivated by the ancients in the five powers which relate to manual arts,
who considered gravity (it not being a manual power, no otherwise than as it moved weights
by those powers. Our design not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject not
manual but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity,
levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive
or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as the mathematical principles of
philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this – from the
ph�nomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to
demonstrate the other ph�nomena; and to this end the general propositions in the first
and second book are directed. In the third book we give an example of this in the
explication of the System of the World; for by the propositions mathematically
demonstrated in the former books, we in the third derive from the celestial ph�nomena the
forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. Then from
these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, we deduce the motions of
the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the
ph�nomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am
induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which
the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled
towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each
other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of
nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to
this or some truer method of philosophy.