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Newton's Principia in Western History
| Article
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12541 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1987 |
3,581 Words |
| Author
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Richard S. Westfall
Richard S. Westfall is a distinguished professor of history
and philosophy of science, and professor of history at
Indiana University. He is author of a major work on Sir
Isaac Newton entitled Never at Rest. |
Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles Of Natural Philosophy, the Principia as the book is universally known from the central word in its Latin title, was published in July 1687. Seldom has a book won more immediate recognition. Even before its publication, when Fatio de Duillier, a young Swiss mathematician, arrived in London in the spring of 1687, he found the learned world aflutter about the work that would, he was told, reshape natural philosophy. "It may justly be said," a review in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society stated shortly before the book itself appeared, "that so many and so Valuable Philosophical Truths, as are herein discovered and put past Dispute, were never yet owing to the Capacity and Industry of any one Man."
The author of the review was Edmond Halley, the publisher of the Principia and the one man besides Newton himself who knew what the forthcoming volume contained. After publication it did not take the British learned community long to arrive at Halley's evaluation. With the Principia, Newton, an obscure professor of mathematics at Cambridge, vaulted in one leap to leadership of English science.
The book met a more ambiguous reception across the channel because of philosophic objections to its concept of attractions. But continental scientists immediately recognized its power and were unable to ignore the work. There has never been a time during the three hundred years since its publication when Principia was not seen as epochal and its author as much more than a mere genius. The publication of Newton's Principia was the most important event in the history of Western science.
Despite its inherent quality, however, one must not make the mistake of seeing the Principia in isolation. It is significant because it participated in a momentous reconstruction of natural philosophy that had been taking place during the previous 150 years, a reconstruction that completely changed Western perceptions of the world. Historians of science call this movement, which began with the work of Copernicus in 1543, the scientific revolution, and they see Newton's Principia, as its culmination. Without the rest of the scientific revolution, Newton could not have conceived the Principia nor could it have exercised its subsequent influence.
The Scientific Revolution
The scientific revolution was based on four major premises. Firstly, modern science rested, in its origin, on the rejection of common sense
...
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