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Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia)
The laws of motion and universal gravitation.
Introduction
Newton’s main work appeared in Latin in London in 1687; Edmond Halley persuaded him to write it and paid for the printing. It is organised like a geometry book, with definitions, three laws of motion and propositions. Book I treats motion under forces in empty space, Book II motion in resisting media, which undermines Descartes’s theory of vortices. Book III, “The System of the World”, derives universal gravitation and explains with it the orbits of planets and comets, the motion of the moon and the tides. The second edition (1713) added the General Scholium, with the remark “I frame no hypotheses” about the cause of gravity.
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Connections
Builds on
- Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems1632 · Galileo Galilei
Taken up in
- Philosophical Letters (Letters on the English)1734 · Voltaire
- Foundations of Physics (Institutions de physique)1740 · Émilie du Châtelet
- Critique of Pure Reason1781 · Immanuel Kant
Criticized in
- The Science of Mechanics1883 · Ernst Mach
- On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies1905 · Albert Einstein
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