[NEWTON, Sir Isaac]Biblio.com
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170751058Cantabrigiæ Cambridge: Typis academicis; Londini London impensis Benj. Tooke 1707. First edition. 8vo. viii 343 1 pp. 19th century full diced calf spine with raised bands gilt lettered black label blind tooled borders to the boards ownership inscription of a William Fitton dated June 1800 to the half title another contemporary owner's inscription - that of a Philip Crampton the date cropped "180" mathemetical annotations to the front and rear leaves and in the margins at intervals within. Joints skilfully repaired some mild soiling to the front and rear leaves an attractive copy. A mathemetical text composed entirely in Latin by Newton and edited by William Whiston who had succeeded him as the Lucasian professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University in 1702. The two had become acquainted during the previous decade and Newton was impressed enough with his acolyte that he invited him to lecture at the university when he was occupied with his other work. It was Whiston who persuaded Newton to publish some of his lectures on algebra but Newton was dissatisfied with Whiston's editing and additions to the text - to the extent that he considered buying the entire stock of the book to prevent its appearance in public. That clearly didn't happen although Newton succeeded in having the book published anonymously and its relative scarcity in commerce suggests a truncated print run. The first ownership inscription is that of the Irish geologist William Fitton 1780-1861. The son of a Dublin lawyer his paternal grandfather had been a mathematical instrument maker. Fitton began his studies at Trinity College Dublin in 1794 and earned his B.A. in 1799 but continued studying there until 1803. He went on to study medicine at Edinburgh University becoming a doctor in 1810 and continued his medical studies in London and Cambridge during the following six years. Fitton's interest in geology and mineralogy were his true passions and after marrying into a wealthy family he was able to devote his studies exclusively to these subjects. He subsequently served as secretary and later as president of the Geological Society published numerous reviews and papers plus a small number of books including 'A Geological Sketch of the Vicinity of Hastings' in 1833. Fitton was awarded the Wollaston Medal the society's highest prize in 1852. The other inscription is almost certainly that of Sir Philip Crampton 1777-1858 an Irish surgeon who awarded many honours and held various senior positions in a long and illustrious career: "elected FRS in 1812. In 1813 he was appointed surgeon-general to the forces in Ireland and he was surgeon to the queen in Ireland a member of the senate of the Queen's University of Ireland and four times president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1811 1820 1844 and 1855. In 1839 he was created baronet" ODNB. Cantabrigiæ [Cambridge]: Typis academicis; Londini [London], impensis Benj. Tooke unknown
17531512210020London: Royal Society Great Britain; The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge: 1753 - 1880; 1960 1753. Hardcover. Good. 0x0x0. A massive collection of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 109 volume set in 102 volumes. Buckram red cloth. Original volumes begin with 1753 volumes: 48 50 part 1 53-56 59-61 63 67 69 71-74 76-84 86-87 89 93-95 97 135 137 140 160 166 167 169-171 end in 1880 vols. 181 186 191-192 197-198 216 1916; Also includes the Royal Society's facsimile reprint of volumes: 1-47 1665 - 1752 49 51-52 57-58 62 64 66 68 70 Index. University library stamps on front paste down title and some edges. Good binding and covers. Over 1053 plates and maps many are folding. <br> The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society was first published in 1665 to promote the discussion and diffusion of scientific knowledge. It was the world's first scientific journal and has lasting and significant influence. In the Philosophical Transactions peer review the scientific method and evidence based research were standardized. The discoveries described in this publication are of fundamental importance to the development of our modern world. Robert Boyle John Wilkins and Robert Hooke were some of the original 17th century English polymaths who established and contributed to the publication. Isaac Newton notably led the society which printed his first paper New Theory about Light and Colours in 1672. Notable articles in the original format contained in this set: Thomas Bayle's: An essay towards solving a problem in the Doctrine of Chances. Vol. 53 1763; Barrington's account of Mozart. Volume 60. 1770; Alessandro Volta. Del modo di render sensibilissima la piu debole Elettricita fia Naturale fia Artificiale. vol. 72. 1782; William Roy. The distance between Greenwich and Paris Observatories. Vol. 1783; Flinders. Concerning the Differences in the Magnetic Needle vol. 95. 1805; Benjamin Franklin. Physical and Meteorological Observations vol. 55. 1765; William Herschel. On the Proper Motion of the Sun and Solar System vol. 73. 1783. Printing and the Mind of Man 227; William Herschel. On Nebulous Stars. Volume 81. 1791; William Herschel. Account of a Comet. Volume 71. 1781. Other notable entries: Henry Cavendish's experiments William Hamilton's observations of an earthquake in Italy John Hunter David Rittenhouse's observation of the transit of Venus William Bartram's naturalist observations in America etc. <br> Please contact us if you would like a full list of contents. Note: Domestic shipping is included. International buyers please contact us before purchase. London: Royal Society (Great Britain); The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge: 1753 - 1880; 1960 hardcover
17422085Edinburgh: T.W. and T. Ruddimans 1742. First edition. Contemporary calf gilt. Fine. FIRST EDITION of MacLaurin's most important work including a strong defense of Isaac Newton and the first full presentation and development of Newton's calculus. The William Jones- Macclesfield copy. "Colin MacLaurin was a younger contemporary and to some extent a protégé of Isaac Newton and he wrote the first thorough systematic axiomatic development of the method of fluxions the Newtonian version of the calculus. MacLaurin's magnum opus the Treatise of Fluxions published in 1742 was begun as a response to Berkeley's Analyst. MacLaurin founded the method of fluxions on a limit concept drawn from the method of exhaustions in classical geometry avoiding the use of infinitesimals infinite processes and actually infinite quantities and avoiding any shifting of the hypothesis. In addition he went on in this treatise of over 760 pages to demonstrate that the method so founded would support the entire received structure of fluxions and the calculus and could deal effectively with all of the challenge problems then being exchanged between British and continental mathematicians" Oxford National Biography. Provenance: Williams Jones the great mathematician and champion and publisher of Newton with his signed manuscript note on p. 621: "His collection of some 15000 books was considered to be the most valuable mathematical library in England and was bequeathed to George Parker the second earl of Macclesfield." The Macclesfield copy with Macclesfield bookplates and embossed stamps in each volume. Edinburgh: T.W. and T. Ruddimans 1742. Quarto 234x175mm contemporary full calf with elaborately gilt-decorated spines. With half-title in volume 1. A little worming in lower margins of first few leaves of volume 2. An outstanding set with a distinguished provenance. T.W. and T. Ruddimans unknown books
1718184239London: printed for W. and J. Innys 1718. His most important work on light with significant revisions Second edition second issue as usual of this seminal study which "did for light what Newton's Principia had done for gravitation namely place it on a scientific basis" Babson. Newton arrived at most of his innovative ideas on colour by about 1668 and Opticks was largely complete by 1692. However when he first expressed his theories in public they provoked hostile criticism. As a result Newton delayed publication until his most vocal critics - especially Robert Hooke - were dead. By the mid-1710s Opticks was established in Britain as the model for blending theoretical speculation and quantitative experimentation. Newton's aim was not to "explain the properties of light by hypotheses but to propose and prove them by reason and experiments" p. 1. The work's greatest achievement is showing that colour is a mathematically definable property. Newton demonstrates that white light is a mixture of infinitely varied coloured rays and that each ray is definable by the angle through which it is refracted. Other topics include colour circles theories of the rainbow and the phenomenon now known as Newton's rings. The textual revisions for this edition demonstrate the development of Newton's experimentation process. The first edition was published in 1704 followed by the Latin translation of 1706. This edition was the first in octavo format. It had a print run of 750 copies and within that two issues. The scarce first issue is dated 1717 on the title page and includes William Bowyer's name in the imprint; copies are recorded both with and without the cancel A2. The second issue as here has a cancel title dated 1718 and only the names of W. and J. Innys Printers to the Royal Society in the imprint; A2 the first two pages of the "Advertisement" is set as the cancel. Octavo 194 x 123 mm pp. viii 382 2 publisher's advertisement. With 12 folding engraved plates woodcut diagram on p. 330 tables in text woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials. Contemporary panelled calf spine with raised bands and early paper label edges sprinkled red. Ownership label of chemist Karol J. Mysels 1914-1998 laid in; occasional tiny marginal notations in contemporary ink to title page and p. 371 and in later pencil to pp. 323 and 328. Extremities restored spine label chipped and browned boards a little splayed contents toned and generally clean: a very good copy in an attractive period binding. Babson 134; ESTC T18663; Gray 176. hardcover
174595840London: Printed by James Bettenham for the Society for the Encouragement of Learning 1745. First edition in English of the mathematical appendixes to <span class="match">Newton</span>'s fundamental 1704 Opticks one of the greatest works of science ever published. Translated from the Latin by James Bettenham Professor of Mathematics at the University of Aberdeen. Quarto bound in contemporary calf gilt titles to the spine burgundy morocco spine label rebacked woodcut diagrams throughout the text engraved tailpiece. In very good condition with some light wear and browning to the text with wide margined text. Exceptionally rare and desirable first editions are scarce with only four appearing at auction in the last 90 years. English mathematician astronomer theologian author and physicist Sir Isaac Newton is widely considered one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution. In one of his most important works Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Newton formulated the the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint until being superseded by the theory of relativity. Considered one of the greatest works of science ever published Newton's second major book Opticks analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass and the behavior of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. Printed by James Bettenham for the Society for the Encouragement of Learning unknown books
1779ASTTX.312<p>London: Thomas Tegg. 1779 First Edition. 32mo – 10.6cm 2 XVI 304pp. Including Table of the Hymns at rear. Full contemporary leather with bright gilt decoration and border ruling on front and rear covers spine with bright gilt title and ornate decoration original soft yellow endpapers all page edges gilt. Near Fine and complete – a Very Rare copy of the Olney Hymns showing the first publication of the hymn "Amazing Grace" p.38-39. This most unique and important copy is preserved in a custom full-leather clam shell box.</p><p>"Amazing Grace" is a Christian hymn written by English poet and clergyman John Newton 1725–1807 published in 1779. With a message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of the sins people commit and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world having been translated in over 50 languages.</p><p>Newton wrote the words from personal experience. He grew up without particular religious conviction but his life's path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by his recalcitrant insubordination. He was pressed into the Royal Navy and became a sailor eventually participating in the slave trade. One night a terrible storm battered his vessel so severely that he became frightened enough to call out to God for mercy a moment that marked the beginning of his spiritual conversion. His career in slave trading lasted a few years more until he quit going to sea altogether and began studying theology.</p><p>Ordained in the Church of England in 1764 Newton became curate of Olney Buckinghamshire where he began to write hymns with poet William Cowper. "Amazing Grace" was written to illustrate a sermon on New Year's Day of 1773. It is unknown if there was any music accompanying the verses and it may have been chanted by the congregation without music. It debuted in print in 1779 in Newton and Cowper's Olney Hymns but it settled into relative obscurity in England. In the United States however "Amazing Grace" was used extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century. It has been associated with more than 20 melodies but in 1835 it was joined to a tune named "New Britain" to which it is most frequently sung today.</p><p>Author Gilbert Chase writes that "Amazing Grace" is "without a doubt the most famous of all the folk hymns"1 and Jonathan Aitken a Newton biographer estimates that it is performed about 10 million times annually.2 It has had a significant influence in folk music and has become an emblematic African American spiritual. Its universal message has been a significant factor in its crossover into secular music. "Amazing Grace" saw a resurgence in popularity in the U.S. during the 1960s and has been recorded thousands of times during and since the 20th century sometimes appearing on popular music charts.</p> Thomas Tegg hardcover
172669561London: Apud Guil. & Joh. Innys 1726. Full Description:<br> <br> NEWTON Sir Isaac. Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica. Editio tertia aucta & emendata. London: Apud Guil. & Joh. Innys 1726.<br> <br> Third edition. One of only 1250 copies printed. Quarto. 34 530 6 index pp. Engraved frontispiece portrait facing title by George Vertue after I. Vanderbank. Bound without the advertisement leaf. Numerous diagrams in the text and one engraving of cometary orbit on p. 506. Title printed in red and black. With the Royal Privilege printed on verso of the first leaf as in Babson copy 2.<br> <br> In full goatskin. Spine ruled and lettered in gilt. Boards paneled in blind. Inner hinges repaired. Some old ink manuscript notes on front flyleaf. Numerous instances of light early pencil marginalia and a few in ink. Some ghost dampstaining throughout. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown. Overall a very good copy.<br> <br> "This edition was the last published during the author's lifetime and the basis of all subsequent editions. It was edited by Henry Pemberton M.D. F.R.S. and contains a new preface by Newton and a large number of alterations the most important being the scholium on fluxions in which Leibnitz had been mentioned by name. This had been considered an acknowledgement of Leibnitz's independent discovery of the calculus. In omitting Leibnitz's name in this edition Newton was criticized as taking advantage of an opponent whose death had prevented any reply" Babson p. 12.<br> <br> Third edition of "the greatest work in the history of science" Printing and the Mind of Man. In the Principia Newton formulated the three laws of motion from which he derived the principle of universal gravitation "wherein all bodies of whatever mass attract one another in proportion to their masses and in inverse ratio as the square of the distance between them. This applies to dust particles as to the mightiest celestial bodies" Dibner.<br> <br> "Copernicus Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed Newton explained the underlying universal laws. The Principia provided the great synthesis of the cosmos proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of gravitation could be explained in mathematical terms within a single physical theory.The same laws of gravitation and motion rule everywhere; for the first time a single mathematical law could explain the motion of objects on earth as well as the phenomena of the heavens. The whole cosmos is composed of inter-connecting parts influencing each other according to these laws. It was this grand conception that produced a general revolution in human thought equalled perhaps only by that following Darwin's Origin of Species" Printing and the Mind of Man 161 describing the first edition.<br> <br> Babson 13. Gray 9. Wallis 9.<br> <br> HBS 69561.<br> <br> $22500. Apud Guil. & Joh. Innys unknown
17076325Cambridge and London: Typis Academicis; Benj. Tooke 1707. First edition. Very Good/William Whiston the successor to Newton's chair at Cambridge "extracted from Newton a somewhat reluctant permission to print" this remarkable "schoolbook" based on Newton's lecture notes Babson Catalogue. So reluctant in fact that Newton kept his name out of it and supposedly considered purchasing the press run in order to destroy it! He later republished it himself. Several new theorems are laid out including a formula to determine the number of imaginary roots of any equation. The rule is complicated and is offered without proof. Yet 180 years later the rule was proven by rigorous analysis. The text also includes Edmond Halley's "Aequationum radices arithmetice inveniendi methodus. Octavo 19cm; 8 343 1 pages the last page blank . Figure and diagrams in text. Running-title: Algebrae elementa. Editor's preface signed: G.W. i.e. William Whiston. In contemporary paneled calf rebacked with new burgundy morocco spine label. Edges of boards rubbed. Early ink ownership inscriptions on blank endleaves the contemporary autograph of Edward Harington and the 19th-century mathematician William Fleetwood Sheppard. Half-title present. References: Babson Newton Collection; 199; ESTC; T018645; Bowes and Bowes 277. Typis Academicis; Benj. Tooke hardcover books
17074639Cambridge; London: Typis Academicus; Benjamin Tooke 1707. First edition. <p>First edition of Newton's treatise on algebra or 'universal arithmetic' his "most often read and republished mathematical work" Whiteside. Included are 'Newton's identities' providing expressions for the sums of the powers of the roots of any polynomial equation plus a rule providing an upper bound for the positive roots of a polynomial and a generalization to imaginary roots of René Descartes' 'Rule of Signs.'</p>. Hardcover. NEWTON'S TREATISE ON ALGEBRA. <p>First edition of Newton's treatise on algebra or 'universal arithmetic' his "most often read and republished mathematical work" Whiteside. "Included are 'Newton's identities' providing expressions for the sums of the ith powers of the roots of any polynomial equation for any integer i pp. 251-2 plus a rule providing an upper bound for the positive roots of a polynomial and a generalization to imaginary roots of René Descartes' Rule of Signs pp. 242-5" Parkinson p. 138. About this last rule for determining the number of imaginary roots of a polynomial which Newton offered without proof Gjertsen p. 35 notes: "Some idea of its originality . can be gathered from the fact that it was not until 1865 that the rule was derived in a rigorous manner by James Sylvester."</p> <br /> <p>Provenance: Jesuit College at Ghent ink inscription 'Bibliotheca Collegii Gandavensis Societatis Jesu.' and shelfmark on title; extensive marginal annotations by a well-informed contemporary reader. This reader was possibly the English Jesuit Christopher Maier 1697-1767. Born in Durham England Maier entered the Society of Jesus in 1715. He taught at Liège where he became interested in astronomy. In 1750 Maire was commissioned by Pope Benedict XIV to measure two degrees of the meridian from Rome to Rimini with fellow Jesuit Roger Boscovich with a view to mapping the Papal States; in turn they proved that the earth is an oblate spheroid as Newton had proposed in Principia publishing their results in Litteraria Expeditione 1755. Maier spent his final years at the English Jesuit College in Ghent.</p> <br /> <p>"In fulfillment of his obligations as Lucasian Professor Newton first lectured on algebra in 1672 and seems to have continued until 1683. Although the manuscript of the lectures in Cambridge University Library carries marginal dates from October 1673 to 1683 it should not be assumed that the lectures were ever delivered. There are no contemporary accounts of them and apart from Cotes who made a transcript of them in 1702 they seem to have been totally ignored. Whiteside Papers V p. 5 believes that they were composed 'over a period of but a few months' during the winter of 1683-4" Gjertsen pp. 33-4. The course of lectures stemmed from a project on which Newton had embarked in the autumn of 1669 thanks to the enthusiasm of John Collins: the revision of Mercator's Latin translation of Gerard Kinckhuysen's Dutch textbook on algebra Algebra ofte stel-konst 1661. Newton composed a manuscript 'Observations on Kinckhuysen' in 1670 see Whiteside Papers II and used it in the preparation of his lectures. He took the opportunity not only to extend Cartesian algebraic methods but also to restore the geometrical analysis of the ancients giving his lectures on algebra a strongly geometric flavor.</p> <br /> <p>"When Newton resigned his Lucasian professorship to his deputy William Whiston in December 1701 it was natural that the latter should wish to familiarize himself with the deposited lectures of his predecessor" Whiteside Papers V p. 8. Whiston later claimed in his Memoirs London: 1749 that Newton gave him his reluctant permission to publish the lectures. Whiston arranged with the London stationer to underwrite the expense of printing the deposited manuscript and then subsequently between September 1705 and the following June corrected both specimen and proof sheets as they emerged from the University Press. The completed editio princeps finally appeared in May 1707 priced at 4s. 6d. without Newton's name on the title page although references inside the work made no attempt to hide the author's identity. It included an appended tract by Halley on 'A new accurate and easy method for finding the roots of any equations generally without prior reduction' pp. 327-343. Publication of the work had been delayed by Newton who complained that the titles and headings were not his and that it contained numerous mistakes. Yet when he prepared a second edition in 1722 the changes he introduced were "primarily reorderings of his own manuscript not corrections of Whiston's additions" Westfall p. 649. In reality Newton's misgivings probably derived more from his reluctance to place before the public a relatively immature and poorly organized work and one that did not take into account the developments in the subject that had taken place in the quarter century since the manuscript was composed.</p> <br /> <p>For a book that was to become Newton's most often republished mathematical work the Arithmetica initially made little impact in Britain and was not even graced by a review in the Philosophical Transactions. On the Continent the reception accorded the lectures was more positive. "Leibniz unhesitatingly divining their author beneath the cloak of anonymity gave them a long review in the Acta Eruditorum of Leipzig in 1708. Written thirty years before he noted and now deservingly printed by William Whiston he assured the reader that 'you will find in this little book certain particularities that you will seek in vain in great tomes on analysis.' His close associate Johann Bernoulli despite some adverse remarks paid Newton the compliment in 1728 of basing his own course on the elements of algebra upon Newton's text. Perhaps partly in consequence of Newton's recent death in Britain too the book began about this time to arouse greater interest than when it was first issued in 1707" Hall p. 174.</p> <br /> <p>Despite the impressive contributions of the work to the theory of equations mentioned earlier it is difficult to pigeonhole the work as being either algebraic or geometric. From one point of view the Arithmetica can be seen as a fulfillment of the programme outlined by Descartes in the Géométrie because it teaches how geometrical problems and also arithmetical and mechanical ones can be translated into the language of algebra. Paradoxically however Newton criticized Descartes maintaining that at least in some cases Apollonian geometry is to be preferred to Cartesian algebra in the analysis of indeterminate problems. Modern analysts he complained had confused algebra and geometry: "The Ancients so assiduously distinguished them one from the other that they never introduced arithmetical terms into geometry. recent people by confusing both have lost the simplicity in which all elegance in geometry consists" Whiteside Papers V p. 429. The last section of the work 'The linear construction of equations' pp. 279-326 is particularly anti-Cartesian the term 'linear' in this context does not refer to straight lines but derives from Pappus. Newton here deals with the problem of constructing cubics third-degree equations that Descartes solved via the intersection of a circle and a parabola. Newton proposed instead to use a curve of degree higher than the conics as a means of construction namely the conchoid a fourth-degree curve. Newton regarded the conchoid as preferable because it has a mechanical construction and leads to a more elegant solution of the problem.</p> <br /> <p>William Whiston 1667-1752 was "a member of the first generation of Cambridge students to emulate Newton's method and principles. He went up to Cambridge in 1686 claimed to have attended one or two incomprehensible lectures by Newton on his Principia and was elected a Fellow of Clare Hall in 1691. After taking orders he left Cambridge for a while returning in 1700 when chosen by Newton to be his deputy as Lucasian Professor. About a year later upon Newton's resignation and commendation Whiston succeeded him. Aberrant theology was to be his downfall. While Newton and their common friend Dr Samuel Clarke kept private their doubts about Trinitarianism the Creed and the Thirty-nine Articles Whiston sought publicly to amend the errors of the Anglican faith; for this he was summoned before the heads of houses in the university and dismissed from his post in 1710" Hall p. 175.</p> <br /> <p>Babson 199; Wallis 277; D. Gjertsen Newton Handbook 1986; A. R. Hall Isaac Newton 1992; R. S. Westfall Never at Rest 1983.</p> <br/> <br/> 8vo pp. viii 343. Woodcut diagrams throughout. Former owner's signature F. Percy White Feb. 1920 on half-title partially erased. Contemporary mottled calf covers with floral border and corner fleurons in blind. / Hardcover. Typis Academicus; Benjamin Tooke unknown
173614348London: Henry Woodfall 1736. FIRST EDITION. With engraved frontispiece interpolated leaf 143-144 and leaf containing errata on the recto publisher’s advertisements on the verso. Paneled sprinkled calf in a contemporary style; a large paper copy with very wide margins a few contemporary annotations. First edition of Newton’s treatise on the calculus a work of great importance and rarity. Ready for publication in 1671 Newton circulated the manuscript among his friends who urged him to establish priority by publishing his own work. He steadfastly refused and prior to his death entrusted it to Henry Pemberton who never had it published. It was not until 1736 that Method of fluxions was finally published in the present English translation by John Colson who added a lengthy commentary. The original Latin edition did not appear until 1779 in the Opera omnia.<br /> <br /> Babson 171; Gray 232; Wallis 232; Smith History of Mathematics I p. 404. Henry Woodfall unknown
1726vBC4008<p>RARE 1726 THIRD EDITION OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA THE LAST EDITION PUBLISHED IN HIS LIFETIME EDITED BY NEWTON HIMSELF THE BASIS FOR ALL SUBSEQUENT EDITIONS. ONE OF ONLY 1250 COPIES PRINTED. AT 300 FAR FEWER REMAIN! London: Guil. & Joh. Innys Regiae Societatis typographos 1726. Quarto 240 x 192 mm. Lauded by Albert Einstein as "perhaps the greatest intellectual stride that has ever been granted to any man to make" Newton's Principia is arguably the most influential book in history. Grounded on the premise that virtually everything in the universe is amenable to scientific understanding this transformative milestone abounding with interdisciplinary impact "is generally described as the greatest work in the history of science. Copernicus Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed Newton explained the underlying universal laws. The Principia provided the greatest synthesis of the cosmos proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of gravitation could be explained in mathematical terms with a single physical theory. With him the separation of the natural and supernatural of sublunar and superlunar worlds disappeared. The same laws of gravitation and motion rule everywhere; for the first time a single mathematical law could explain the motion of objects on earth as well as the phenomena of the heavens. The whole cosmos is composed of inter-connecting parts influencing each other according to these laws. It was this grand conception that produced a general revolution in human thought equaled perhaps only by that following Darwin's Origin of Species… Newton is generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time and the founder of mathematical physics. It was the final irrevocable break with a medieval conception based on Greek and Roman cosmology and a scholastic system derived from the medieval interpretation of Aristotle. Newton's universe almost independent of the spiritual order ushered in the age of rationalism scientific determinism and the acceptance of a mechanistic view of nature" PMM 161. Dissatisfied with the first two editions of his own masterpiece London 1687; Amsterdam 1723 Newton towards the end of his life "gave one last effort to the Principia. It is clear that he regarded the Principia rather than the Opticks as his masterwork. He worked over the Principia without end to hone its language to a perfect expression of his ideas… . Perhaps a serious illness in 1722 reminded him that he could not delay forever. We know only that the printing of an edition more sumptuous than either of the others began in the fall of 1723." Westfall The Life of Isaac Newton. With portrait engraving by Vertue bound before first text leaf and numerous illustrations in text. Complete with the privilege leaf half-title dedication leaf index and ad leaf. 240 x 192 mm. 18th-century paneled calf gilt-lettered spine rebacked hinges cracked but holding. Frontispiece caption trimmed with some loss to artists' signatures minor foxing and toning but a very good crisp copy. Engraved armorial bookplate of the Earl of Hopetoun. Third edition revised and expanded edited by Henry Pemberton M.D. F.R.S. contains a new preface by Newton and many alterations and clarifications the scholium on fluxions chief among them. Sir Isaac Newton died on March 31 1727 at the age of 84 one year after his treasured edition was published. This Third Edition of his Principia is the final definitive statement of the man who invented calculus determined the composition of light and discovered the laws of gravity and motion which govern the universe the founder of modern science Sir Isaac Newton. Book #vBC4008. $26000. We specialize in rare Ayn Rand and other legends and landmarks.</p> Guil. & Joh. Innys hardcover
178314487London 1783. Diameter: 70mm 2.75 inches. Globe 12 hand-coloured engraved paper gores clipped at 65 degrees latitude with two polar calottes over a papier mâché and plaster sphere varnished housed within original shagreen over paste-board clamshell case with hooks and eyes lined with 12 hand-coloured engraved celestial gores with two polar calottes varnished. The case split in both halves where hinge would have been loss to exterior and minor loss to celestial gores. Biography During the first half of the nineteenth century the firm of Newton together with Bardin and Cary occupied a leading position in the manufacture of globes in London. The firm was established by John Newton in 1783 and operated originally from the Globe & Sun 128 Chancery Lane moving to 97 Chancery Lane in 1803 before settling at 66 Chancery Lane in 1817. John Newton 1759-1844 was trained by Thomas Bateman fl1754-81 who had previously been apprenticed to Nathaniel Hill fl1746-1768. Newton's first globe was a revised edition of Hill's 1754 pocket globe which he published in 1783 in association with William Palmer. The partnership dissolved shortly after and Newton continued to publish the pocket globe under his own name. John's second son William Newton 1786-1861 joined the firm between 1814-1816 which traded under the name J. & W. Newton. In the same year the firm produced a new series of globes including a new pocket globe. By the 1830s the firm was also active as a patent agent and was joined by Miles Berry a civil engineer and patent agent after which the firm was known as Newton Berry & Son. In 1842 William's eldest son William Edward Newton 1818-1879 joined the business followed by his brother Alfred Vincent Newton 1821-1900. The firm became known as W. Newton & Son or once again on the death of William as simply Newton & Son from 1861 until about 1883. Perhaps the greatest triumph for the Newton family was the Great Exhibition of 1851 where aside from the globes they exhibited from 150 to 635mm 1 to 25 inches in diameter they were awarded a prize medal for a manuscript terrestrial globe of six feet in diameter. Geography Newton used Hill's copper plates from his 1754 pocket globe for the present globe with a number of alternations and updates. He has changed the text within the cartouche to feature his own name however he retains the rococo cartouche that Hill used. Newton added Captain Cook's track and updated the Australian coastline with his discoveries including "New Holland" "New South Wales" "Botany Bay" "Dimens Land" "Lewins Land" the "Isles of St Francis" and "New Zeeland". The globe shows the equinoctial graduated in degrees and the conforming ecliptic is highlighted in green. The prime meridian passes through London and the principal land masses are outlined in colour and annotated with some of the major rivers and mountain ranges. The oceans show the winds with islands labelled and printed with dotted lines for Admiral Anson's Tract and the tract of Captain Cook's first voyage in 1760 while the North Pacific region features a rococo scroll title cartouche. Astronomy The gores are pasted to the inside of the case and the cartography features stars expressed in varying orders of magnitude and allegorical representations of the constellations finely executed. Dekker GLB0029; Dekker and van der Krogt fig.57; for reference see Dahl and Gauvin pp.93-95; van der Krogt Hil 1 and Hil 4; Worms and Baynton-Williams pp.318-319; Dekker pp.355-357. unknown
1726H-142<p>Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica third edition half-title engraved portrait frontispiece title in red and black woodcut illustrations and diagrams some foxing and soiling contemporary calf joints and corners worn <strong>4to</strong> William & John Innys <strong>1726</strong>.<br />This edition was edited by Henry Pemberton and Sir Isaac Newton wrote a preface with new edits just one year before he passed away in 1727. <strong>This third edition printed in London is the very basis of all subsequent printings</strong> of the Principia and a true history existing through time.<br /><strong>One out of 1250 copies</strong> Demy 1000 regular issue see below printed and with complete pagination this copy is a remarkable and rare book in the history of science.</p><p>The 1726 edition was comprised of 1250 copies evidenced by William Bowyer's paper stock ledger which records the following: Superfine 50 largest paper; Royal 200 large paper; Demy 1000 regular issue. Royal copies can be identified by their size and CC watermark. See: Henry P. Macomber and Gerald G. Grubb "A census of the owners of copies of the 1687 first edition of Newton's Principia" <em>PBSA </em>47 1953 269-304 p.293. Babson 11-12 Wallis 9.</p> Guil. & Joh. Innys, Regiae Societatis typographos hardcover
17262210London: Guil. & Joh. Innys Regiae Societatis typographos 1726. Third Edition. contemporary full vellum. RARE 1726 THIRD EDITION OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA THE LAST EDITION EDITED BY NEWTON AND THE BASIS FOR ALL SUBSEQUENT EDITIONS. ONE OF ONLY 1250 COPIES PRINTED. "The Principia is generally described as the greatest work in the history of science. Copernicus Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed Newton explained the underlying universal laws. The Principia provided the great synthesis of the cosmos proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of gravitation could be explained in mathematical terms within a single physical theory. With him the separation of natural and supernatural of sublunar and superlunar worlds disappeared. The same laws of gravitation and motion rule everywhere; for the first time a single mathematical law could explain the motion of objects on earth as well as the phenomena of the heavens. The whole cosmos is composed of inter-connecting parts influencing each other according to these laws. It was this grand conception that produced a general revolution in human thought equalled perhaps only by that following Darwin's Origin of Species. It was the final irrevocable break with a medieval conception based on Greek and Roman cosmology and a scholastic system derived from the medieval interpretation of Aristotle. Newton's universe almost independent of the spiritual order ushered in the age of rationalism scientific determinism and the acceptance of a mechanistic view of nature" Printing and the Mind of Man 161. On the history and importance of the third edition: Towards the end of his life Newton "gave one last effort to the Principia. It is clear that he regarded the Principia rather than the Opticks as his masterwork. He worked over the Principia without end to hone its language to a perfect expression of his ideas. Perhaps the appearance of a reprint of the second edition in Amsterdam in 1723 stimulated Newton to put his plan for a new edition into action. Perhaps a serious illness in 1722 reminded him that he could not delay forever. We know only that printing of an edition more sumptuous than either of the others began in the fall of 1723. As editor Newton had the services of a young member of the Royal Society Henry Pemberton. In the fall of 1723 Pemberton addressed to him the first of thirty-one communications which stretched over the following two-and-a-half years while the edition passed through the press. Through 1724 and 1725 the edition made its slow but steady progress toward completion with none of the delays that stopped the press during the second edition. Newton dated the preface 12 January 1726. It was the last day of March when Martin Folkes presented a copy 'richly Bound in morocco Leather' to the Royal Society in Newton's name. In all 1250 copies were printed." Westfall The Life of Isaac Newton. The third edition "contains a new preface by Newton and a large number of alterations" Babson 13. With portrait engraving by Vertue bound before first text leaf and numerous illustrations in text. Complete with the privilege leaf half-title dedication leaf index and ad leaf. London: Guil. & Joh. Innys Regiae Societatis typographos 1726. Quarto 186x241 mm contemporary full Dutch vellum; custom half-leather box. Unidentified early signatures on front pastedown half-title and ad leaf verso. Mild scuffing to binding boards a little bowed. Text with occasional light soiling and scattered foxing but generally clean. A beautiful copy. SCARCE IN AN UNRESTORED CONTEMPORARY BINDING. Guil. & Joh. Innys, Regiae Societatis typographos unknown books
1726188378London: William & John Innys printers to the Royal Society 1726. The final lifetime edition Third edition revised by Newton himself; the final and most lavish edition to appear in his lifetime. The revisions include a new preface by Newton and one of his final statements on the nature of philosophy. By 1726 the 83-year-old Newton was making a sustained effort to tidy up his scientific legacy. For the Principia that meant adapting his arguments in light of his many disputes with continental philosophers following the first edition of 1687. The third edition is perhaps most notable for the new Rule IV of Book III in which Newton codifies his contention that hypotheses and particularly Leibnizian aether hypotheses have no place in true philosophy. Newton also adds extensive revisions to the sections on fluxions and lunar motion. Henry Pemberton 1694-1771 a 30-year-old physician and correspondent of the Oxford Newtonian John Keill was selected as the co-editor although Newton remained the primary force shaping the edition. A contemporary reader has made four ink annotations throughout this copy on pages 388 414 416 and 465 along with a handful of underlinings. The reader is particularly interested in Newton's treatment of lunar theory: the annotation on page 414 observes that "faciliùs multò polest hic calculus perfici ope motûs lunaris" "this calculation could be completed much more easily with the help of the lunar movement". Quarto 240 x 188 mm pp. xxxiv 530 8. Engraved portrait frontispiece after George Vertue engraved illustration by John Senex at p. 506 woodcut tables diagrams headpiece and initial within the text. Title page lettered in red and black. Contemporary mottled calf spine rebacked to style and with later red morocco label covers with double-fillet panel in gilt. With December 1922 signature of one Herbert Brittain possibly the Treasury official and mathematics graduate 1894-1961 to front pastedown. Light rubbing extremities restored infrequent foxing to contents: a very good copy. Babson 13; ESTC T98375; Gray 9; Wallis II.9. unknown
17136668Cantabrigiae Cambridge: Cornelius Crownfield at the University Press 1713. Second edition. <p>Second edition and the first to contain the General Scholium - the four pages in which Hypotheses non fingo appears in print for the first time and in which Newton having spent the entire book establishing gravity as a mathematical law without a known cause gestures in his closing paragraph toward a spiritus subtilissimus diffused through all bodies and responsible at once for cohesion light sensation and electricity. Twenty-six years separate this from the 1687 first edition. What Roger Cotes extracted from Newton in three and a half years of editorial labour is not a corrected reprint but a substantively different book: of the original 494 pages 397 were altered; Book II was essentially rewritten; the lunar and cometary theories were enlarged; and Cotes's own preface was added - the first sustained public defence of Newtonian induction against Cartesian vortex physics. Printed in 750 copies and distributed by Newton's own hand to the academies and courts of Europe the 1713 is the edition through which Newtonianism conquered the Continent - the Principia Voltaire used and Émilie du Châtelet's base text for the only French translation Newton has ever had.</p>. The First Appearance of the General Scholium and of Hypotheses non fingo. <p>Second edition and the first to contain the General Scholium - Newton's most famous and most quoted single passage in which the phrase Hypotheses non fingo appears in print for the first time. Twenty-six years separate this edition from the 1687 first and Newton spent most of those years claiming to have lost interest in natural philosophy while in fact reworking the Principia in private. What the Cambridge mathematician Roger Cotes and the formidable Master of Trinity Richard Bentley between them extracted from him in the years 1709 to 1713 is not a corrected reprint of the 1687 Principia but a substantively different book - the version of the Principia through which the eighteenth century actually came to know Newtonian physics. The first edition had been a hurried mathematical performance for a tiny audience printed in perhaps 250 copies and effectively unobtainable on the Continent within a few years. The second edition printed in 750 copies at the recently revived Cambridge University Press and distributed by Newton's own hand to a list of European academies princes and savants - including a personal presentation to Queen Anne on 27 July 1713 and copies sent to Cassini de la Hire Varignon the Bernoullis Leibniz and Yale - is the Principia through which Newtonianism established itself as the dominant scientific worldview of the European Enlightenment.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The story of how the edition came into being is essentially the story of Cotes's labour. Bentley who had recently revived Cambridge University Press and was looking for a flagship publication to establish its prestige persuaded Newton in 1709 to allow a new edition and proposed Cotes - at twenty-seven the recently appointed first Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity - as supervisor of the work. Newton at first treated the revision casually but Cotes took it seriously and in the course of three and a half years of close collaboration coaxed Newton into a similar enthusiasm. The surviving Newton-Cotes correspondence edited by Edleston in 1850 and one of the most revealing documents we have of Newton at work shows Cotes querying every page proposing alterations and gradually pulling Newton back into active engagement with mathematical and astronomical problems he had not seriously thought about in fifteen years. By the time the printing was finished in the spring of 1713 the 494 pages of the 1687 had become a book of which as Rouse Ball calculated 397 are more or less modified in the second edition. The major reworked sections were the propositions on the resistance of fluids in Book II - sections 6 and 7 propositions 34 to 40 where Newton had been embarrassed by errors since the 1690s and which are now essentially rewritten; the lunar theory in Book III much enlarged using observational data Newton had wrenched from Flamsteed in a quarrel that broke their friendship; the precession of the equinoxes Book III prop. 39; and the cometary theory Book III props. 41 and 42 of which the visible monument in the volume is the folding engraved plate at p. 465 showing the parabolic orbit of the great comet of 1680. None of this revised material had been seen in print before. Cotes died of a fever on 5 June 1716 three years after publication aged thirty-three. When Newton heard he is recorded as saying that if Cotes had lived we might have known something - the only generous tribute Newton ever paid to anyone and a measure of how seriously the Principia of 1713 should be understood as a Newton-Cotes joint production rather than as a Newton solo.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Cotes's Editoris Praefatio which opens the book after Newton's two prefaces is the first explicit sustained public defence of Newtonian natural philosophy as a method - induction from phenomena rather than hypothesis from first principles - and as a metaphysical position distinct from both Cartesianism and from Leibniz's emerging dynamical cosmology. Cotes attacks the Cartesian vortex theory of planetary motion directly and dismisses the charge that Newtonian gravitation is a causa occulta an occult quality smuggled in by an author who has no proper mechanical explanation for the action of bodies at a distance. He insists that gravity is to be regarded as a primary property of matter on a level with extension mobility and impenetrability. Newton who had explicitly told Bentley not to attribute that view to him declined to read the preface before publication and afterwards declined to disown it; his silence is itself eloquent and he was content for Cotes's harder line to stand as the official Newtonian position. I. B. Cohen in his Introduction to Newton's Principia 1971 called Cotes's preface the first clear public statement of the inductive method in any language. It is more than any text Newton himself ever wrote the founding manifesto of what the eighteenth century would call Newtonianism - and the Principia of 1713 as a result is the first edition in which Newtonianism has the shape of a party with a platform.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>By far the most important single addition to the second edition however is Newton's own - the Scholium Generale sent by him to Cotes on 2 March 1713 very late in the printing process and now the most quoted single passage in all of Newton's published work. It runs from page 481 to page 484 occupies the last leaves before the index and was clearly conceived by Newton as the philosophical and theological capstone of the entire Principia. The Scholium begins with a sustained attack on the Cartesian hypothesis of vortices - the same target Cotes has already softened in his preface - and then expands into the most extended discussion of the nature of God ever printed under Newton's name. The phrasing is famously austere: God is to be understood not through the familiar attributes of perfection which we may admire but through dominion in virtue of which we revere and adore him; he exercises this dominion in modo minime humano in modo nobis prorsus incognito and is utterly void of all body and bodily figure and can therefore neither be seen nor heard nor touched. There is no room in this theology for anything resembling the personal God of orthodox Christianity. Newton scholarship is now broadly agreed that the surface text is constructed in concentric layers with the uncontroversial argument from design occupying the outer skin and a heterodox attack on the doctrine of the Trinity concealed in the inner layers accessible only to readers prepared to follow Newton's deeply private theology. Denial of the Trinity remained a criminal offence in Britain until 1813 a full century after the Scholium first appeared in print; Samuel Clarke Newton's closest theological ally had published a controversial critique of the Trinity the year before. The most revolutionary book in the history of science championed throughout the eighteenth century as the model of orthodox natural theology ends on a quietly subversive note that Newton was content for only the cognoscenti to recognise.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>From God Newton turns abruptly to gravity and to the most quoted sentence in his entire published work. He acknowledges that he has not been able to discover from phenomena the cause of gravity and that he will not feign hypotheses about it: Hypotheses non fingo. The phrase has no published precedent. It does not occur in the 1687 Principia nor in the Opticks nor in any of Newton's earlier papers. Its first appearance in print is in this edition on a leaf added in the spring of 1713 almost as an afterthought and it has been the watchword of the Newtonian style of physics ever since - invoked by every subsequent generation of physicists who have wished to claim the authority of phenomena over speculation from the eighteenth-century anti-Cartesians through Mach and Duhem to the operationalists of the twentieth century. Whether Newton himself meant it as the categorical rejection of all hypothesising that it became is doubtful; the surrounding paragraphs make clear that he is rejecting a particular kind of speculative mechanical hypothesis about the cause of gravity rather than abjuring theoretical reasoning in general. But the slogan once printed took on a life entirely independent of its author's intentions and the 1713 Principia is the only edition in which one can encounter that life beginning.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The Scholium ends with a paragraph that has attracted if anything less notice than it deserves. Having declared that he frames no hypotheses about the cause of gravity Newton allows himself in the last paragraph of the entire Principia to speak of spiritus quidam subtilissimus - a most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies by means of which he proposes particles of bodies attract one another light is emitted reflected refracted and bent bodies are heated sensations are excited the limbs of animals move at the command of the will and electric bodies repel and attract. It is an extraordinary list and an extraordinary moment: Newton having spent the entire book establishing that gravity is a mathematical law without a known cause ends his most public work by gesturing toward a unified mediating substance that would account at once for gravity light heat sensation the action of will and the phenomena of electricity. He concludes by remarking only that these are things which cannot be explained in few words - and the Principia ends. The spiritus subtilissimus paragraph is the closest Newton ever came in print to a unified theory of the imponderables and it is the seed from which both the eighteenth-century aether physics of Hauksbee Desaguliers and Boscovich and through a longer historical filiation that runs through Faraday the nineteenth-century field-theoretic conception of physics would germinate. It survives only because Newton appended it to the General Scholium in March 1713 and Cotes set it in type before the press could be stopped - a textual moment in other words made possible only by this edition.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The remaining innovations of the second edition are smaller but worth recording. The dedication leaf is rewritten from 1687 - the Illustrissimae Societati Regali dedication that the present copy carries names King Charles II as the founder of the Royal Society and Queen Anne as the monarch under whose auspices it now flourishes in place of the original 1687 dedication that had named James II. The change is small and politically inevitable the Glorious Revolution had intervened James was an exile Newton himself had been knighted by Anne in 1705 but it is a reminder that this is the Principia of an established and triumphant national science rather than of a private mathematician operating at the edge of an institutional culture. Halley's celebrated Latin ode In viri praestantissimi D. Isaaci Newtoni opus hocce mathematico-physicum - the only verse tribute one major scientist has ever paid to the published work of another in seventeenth-century English science - is reprinted with its closing line Nec fas est propius mortali attingere Divos still in place. Newton's two prefaces the 1686 original and a brief new one dated Dabam Londini Mart. 28. 1713 in which he summarises the changes sit together for the first time. And - a small but real piece of editorial archaeology - the 1713 is the first edition of the Principia to carry an actual table of contents the Index Capitum totius Operis listing the section headings of Books I and II with their page references together with a sketchy alphabetical index at the rear. The 1687 had had nothing of the sort. The book is for the first time navigable. This too is a sign of Cotes's editorial mind.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The 1713 lunar theory deserves a closer look as the most contentious revision of the entire edition. Newton's reworking of Book III propositions 25 to 35 on the motion of the moon depended throughout on the unpublished observational data of John Flamsteed the first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. Newton had had the use of Flamsteed's observations during the 1690s but the relationship had broken down spectacularly when Flamsteed declined to release further data without prior credit and Newton with Halley's complicity contrived to have Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis printed against his will in 1712 from a working draft. Flamsteed eventually recovered three hundred copies of the pirated edition and burned them publicly at the Royal Observatory; the corrected authorised Historia would not appear until 1725 six years after Flamsteed's death. The 1713 Principia is therefore not only an intellectual document but a forensic exhibit in one of the most acrid scientific quarrels of the period. Newton's lunar theory as recast under Cotes's editorial pressure is built on the very observations whose owner was at the same moment attempting to recall them from circulation; the elegant new propositions on lunar motion in Book III are materially the spoils of the Flamsteed quarrel. Cotes seems to have understood the awkwardness perfectly well and never raised it in correspondence. The result in any case is that the 1713 contains a lunar theory accurate to within a few minutes of arc - a substantial improvement on 1687 and the empirical basis on which Maupertuis and Clairaut would later test the predictions of Newtonian gravitation against the observed motion of the apsides of the lunar orbit the test that finally settled the eighteenth-century debate over whether universal gravitation was sufficient to account for the moon.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The print run of the second edition is famous: 750 copies against perhaps 250 of the first. Bentley's accounts have survived and show that the total cost of printing came to £117 4s 1½d; he sold 375 copies to booksellers and individuals at an average of 13s each with Crownfield the printer taking a further 200 at 11s yielding Bentley a profit of about £200 while still leaving substantial stock. Cotes who did the actual intellectual work received twelve presentation copies and no money. Some seventy or so further copies are recorded in a distribution list among Newton's papers as having been sent to named recipients across Europe - Cassini de la Hire Varignon Johann and Daniel Bernoulli Leibniz Machin - together with the major academies royal libraries and university collections from Paris to St Petersburg. The personal presentation to Queen Anne on 27 July 1713 is documented separately as is a copy Newton sent to Yale. Voltaire who had learned Newtonian physics from Maupertuis after his return from England in 1729 wrote the Eléments de la philosophie de Newton 1738 using the second edition; his personal copy survives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Émilie du Châtelet working with Clairaut on her French translation through the 1740s and published posthumously in 1759 as Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle - still the only French translation Newton has ever had - used the 1713 as her primary base collated against the 1726 third edition. The 1713 is therefore not merely the second edition: it is the edition through which Newtonian became a synonym for modern in eighteenth-century European thought and copies in unrestored or near-unrestored contemporary bindings with the original endpapers preserved are markedly less common on the market than the standard sale catalogues suggest.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>References: Babson 12 - Wallis 8 - Gray 8 - Babson Suppl. p. 8 - Norman 1587 - Gjertsen Newton Handbook pp. 463-4 and 475-6 - Cohen Introduction to Newton's Principia 1971 chapters VII-IX - ESTC T93210 - PMM 161 for the first edition.</p> <br /> <br/> <br/> <br /> <p>4to 235 × 190 mm pp. xxviii 484 8. Engraved Cambridge University arms vignette on the title by Samuel Gribelin signed S.G. at lower edge one folding engraved plate of the cometary orbit at p. 465 woodcut diagrams throughout the text woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials. Paper a fine European laid stock chain lines horizontal at 25 mm spacing watermark a star with curling ornament visible in several gatherings consistent with imported Dutch paper of the period. Contemporary English calf blind-tooled rectangular panel on the boards raised bands on the spine with double gilt fillets at the bands single red morocco lettering-piece gilt NEWTON'S / PRINCIPIA / MATHEMATICA edges sprinkled red; spine and corners sympathetically renewed using the original spine leather where possible original pastedowns and free endleaves preserved. Old waterstaining at the upper outer corner of the title and at the fore-edges of the first and last gatherings not affecting text; old ink mark and minor surface marks to the upper cover; the body of the text crisp and clean throughout the engraved plate fresh the corrigenda leaf at the rear present.</p> . Cornelius Crownfield at the University Press] unknown
1719146958November 11 1719. Rare and unrecorded 18th century legal document signed twice at the conclusion by Sir Isaac Newton as a witness to a land indenture. Manuscript document signed twice on the verso "Isaac Newton" one vellum membrane dated 11 November 1719 signed by Thomas Sturgess and with his seal witnessed twice on the dorse the sealing of the document and the payment of the PS270 witnessed separately by Newton and also by Richard Cox and James Weston and also signed again by Sturgess. The document records an indenture by which Thomas Sturgess of the parish of St Martin's in the Fields sells to Robert Newton of Colsterworth Lincs for the sum of PS270 a messuage or tenement in Colsterworth in the tenure of William Bulliner and also around 70 acres of arable land and pasture in Colsterworth and Woolsthorpe "Woollstrop" also occupied by the Bulliner family William Joan and son John also one rood i.e. quarter acre of land previously belonging to John Storey of Kneeton Notts and other lands. Newton was in his mid-70s when he witnessed this deed and was living in London as Master of the Mint. He almost certainly knew both parties to this transaction. His home in St Martin's Street was in the parish of St Martin's in the Fields which was also the home of Thomas Sturgess who was selling the land in this transaction. The buyer was his first cousin once removed Robert Newton of Colsterworth d.1734. Isaac Newton would also have been familiar with the fields and houses that his cousin was buying: the property in question included land in Newton's native hamlet of Woolsthorpe as well as in the adjacent village of Colsterworth. In near fine condition. The piece measures 20 inches by 23. Documents signed by Sir Isaac Newton are rare and most relate to his work as Master of the Mint. A document closely related to this one was however sold at auction in 2015. Dated one day before the current document that deed recorded the sale of land by Sturgess to Robert Newton for the nominal sum of 5 shillings. It was similarly signed only once by Isaac Newton as a witness. English mathematician astronomer theologian author and physicist Sir Isaac Newton is widely considered one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution. In one of his most important works Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint until being superseded by the theory of relativity. Considered one of the greatest works of science ever published Newton’s second major book Opticks analyzes the fundamental nature of light by means of the refraction of light with prisms and lenses the diffraction of light by closely spaced sheets of glass and the behavior of color mixtures with spectral lights or pigment powders. hardcover
17286610London: J. Tonson J. Osborn & T. Longman 1728. First edition. <p>First edition an extraordinary Newtonian association copy of Newton's rarest book inscribed by James Stirling recording the gift from Abraham de Moivre "Ja: Stirling Ex Dono Dni De Moivre". Drafted in the mid-1680s as the liber secundus of the earliest Principia the text differs substantially from the published Book III. Among its non-Principia contents are the thought-experiment of the orbiting cannonball anticipating the artificial satellite the first acceptable photometric determination of a stellar distance and passages that point to terrestrial tides Michelson 1919 and to the existence of the planet Uranus Herschel 1781. OCLC lists six copies worldwide; no copy in Cambridge.</p>. An Exceptional Newtonian Association Copy. <p>First edition of Newton's rarest book - the discarded first draft of what would become Book III of Principia posthumously published in the year following his death - and an extraordinary association copy in contemporary panelled calf inscribed on the front pastedown by James Stirling: "Ja: Stirling Ex Dono Dni De Moivre". The inscription records the gift in the year of publication from Abraham de Moivre to Stirling his junior by twenty-five years. The two men were the foremost mathematicians at work in London at Newton's death and the leading contemporary proponents of Newtonian mathematics; both had been part of Newton's personal circle for decades both were Fellows of the Royal Society in his lifetime and within two years of the present gift their joint correspondence on the asymptotic behaviour of the binomial coefficient would yield what is now known as Stirling's formula. Of de Moivre the ODNB remarks that he was the man "whose early investigations led Stirling into this topic". The book passed with the rest of Stirling's mathematical library into the family seat at Garden House in Stirlingshire where it remained for nearly three centuries until the dispersal at Lyon & Turnbull Edinburgh on 23 October 2025. No comparable association copy of the Latin first edition is recorded in the modern trade.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The text Conduitt brought through the press in 1728 had been written in 1685 in the same Cambridge year as the first two books of Principia and was originally intended to constitute the second of two books under the title De motu corporum liber secundus. By the summer of 1685 Newton had expanded the design of Principia to three books with the original second book becoming the third; at the same moment he reconsidered the character of the new Book III. He had at first envisaged a popular treatment that as he noted in the introduction to the published Book III 'might be read by many'; but fearing the controversies such a work would invite he replaced the popular draft with a strictly mathematical exposition that could be read only by those who had mastered the first two books Gjertsen p. 573. Having no immediate use for the rejected version Newton had Humphrey Newton no relation his Cambridge amanuensis make a fair copy of part of the manuscript and on 29 September 1687 deposited it in the Cambridge University Library in the supposed fulfilment of his obligations as Lucasian Professor: that deposit mostly in Humphrey's hand is now ULC MS Add. 3990. A further copy by Roger Cotes is preserved at Trinity College Cambridge and a third copy is held at Clare College; Ernst Weil offered a fourth in his Catalogue 27 no. 152. Newton's distaste for controversy precluded the printing of any of these copies in his lifetime.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The 1728 publication was arranged by John Conduitt the husband of Newton's half-niece Catherine Barton and his successor as Master of the Mint who had taken charge of Newton's manuscripts after his death in March 1727. Conduitt sold the deposit copy to the bookseller Jacob Tonson for thirty-one pounds and ten shillings and Tonson published in partnership with John Osborn and Thomas Longman. It was almost certainly Conduitt who substituted the title De mundi systemate for Newton's own De motu corporum liber secundus - a definite improvement corresponding much more closely to the content but one that has caused enduring confusion with the title of the published Book III of Principia from which the present text differs sharply in style and method.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>What is published here differs from the printed Book III of 1687 not only in style but in substance. The first part offers a non-mathematical account of centripetal force; the next turns to the dynamics of the solar system; two long discussions then follow on the theory of tides and the nature and dynamics of comets the work closing with the inverse problem of recovering a comet's orbit from its observed velocity and distance from the Sun. Several discoveries and observations preserved in the rejected text never reached the printed Principia at all. Pages 3-4 contain Newton's thought-experiment of the orbiting cannonball with an accompanying diagram here Tab. I Fig. 1 showing that there is no kind-difference between projectile and orbital motion: a ball fired from the top of a mountain with progressively greater velocity falls further and further from the base of the mountain until at length it never reaches the ground at all and enters into orbit. Ernst Weil regarded this as "the anticipation of an artificial satellite 270 years before its advent". The discussion and diagram do not appear in the 1687 Principia in any form.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>More substantial still is the discussion of stellar distances on which the printed Principia is virtually silent. Newton had investigated the question in 1685 by a method devised by James Gregory in 1668: comparing the brightness of the Sun by way of its reflection from Saturn with that of a fixed star and then applying the inverse-square law of photometry. With assumptions about the nature of reflection the absence of light-loss in interstellar space and the equality of intrinsic brightness between the Sun and the comparison star Newton found Sirius to lie at a distance of about a million astronomical units. The figure is too great by an order of magnitude but as J. D. North has argued this can be counted as "the first acceptable determination of a star's distance" Cosmos p. 418. Newton's motivation was theological as much as astronomical: he had been perplexed by the question why the cosmos did not collapse upon itself under the action of universal gravitation and the immense interstellar distances supplied a workable answer.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The text further records in advance of their observational confirmation two phenomena that would not be detected for another two centuries. Newton points to the possibility of terrestrial tidal effects; these were observed by Albert A. Michelson and Henry G. Gale at Yerkes Observatory in 1919 by the application of monochromatic interference fringes to a determination of the rigidity of the Earth and reported in Science 50 pp. 327-8. In another passage first identified by J. Ph. Wolfers in his German Principia of 1872 Newton indicates the possible existence of a planet beyond Saturn ultimately observed by Herschel in 1781 and named Uranus - ironically Herschel himself on first observation took it to be a comet the very class of body that Newton throughout the present work regards as continuous with the planets and as moving on closely related orbits.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The publication history of 1728 is further complicated by the simultaneous appearance of an anonymous English translation A Treatise of the System of the World sometimes attributed to Andrew Motte the translator of Principia in 1729; its translator has never been certainly identified. The Latin and English texts diverge in important respects and it is unclear whether the Treatise is a translation of a different and now-lost manuscript or whether the differences reflect interpolations by the translator. The Latin version is unambiguously based on the manuscript in Humphrey's hand: the compositor uses a half-square bracket in the margins to mark the end of one page and the beginning of another in the manuscript and to flag in some places the start of a manuscript signature Cohen p. xii. The translator additionally suppressed Newton's many citations to specific propositions in the original-draft Principia sometimes adversely affecting the readability of the result; in the Latin the citations have been preserved but updated to correspond to the proposition numbering of the third edition of Principia London 1726 which makes the present Latin text the more informative scientifically and historically. The citations were restored only in the second English edition of 1731 an edition that I. B. Cohen accordingly considered "of far more value . than the first" English version Cohen p. xiii. The Treatise is much more frequently encountered in commerce: OCLC lists more than fifty copies of the English first edition and twenty-five or more have appeared at auction. The Latin first edition presents a quite different picture.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The Latin De mundi systemate is exceptionally rare. OCLC lists only six copies worldwide three of them in North America Chicago the Huntington Library - the Babson copy - and Yale and no copy is recorded in either the Cambridge College libraries or the Cambridge University Library despite Newton's manuscript residing on the same site. The Cambridge Digital Library editorial note to MS Add. 3990 states in a small error perhaps connected to the Cambridge gap that the work was first published in 1731 - the year of the second edition. Auction appearances over the last fifty years have been restricted to two recorded copies: the Honeyman copy rebacked and damp-stained and the Macclesfield copy from the Earls of Macclesfield's celebrated mathematical library at Shirburn Castle. The present copy is the third copy to come to public sale in that period and is the first to be offered with a contemporary presentation inscription linking it directly to two of Newton's closest mathematical contemporaries. The Latin text was reprinted in London in 1731 and again in Amsterdam in 1742; it was incorporated into Johannes Castillioneus's Isaaci Newtoni Opuscula at Lausanne in 1744 and into Samuel Horsley's five-volume Isaaci Newtoni Opera at London in 1779-85; none of these later printings carries the textual authority of the 1728 first edition prepared in the immediate aftermath of Newton's death from the manuscript his executors retained.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>James Stirling 1692-1770 to whom the present copy was given was born at Garden House in Stirlingshire on 11 May 1692 the third son of Archibald Stirling and Anna Hamilton into a Scottish family with deep Jacobite sympathies. He matriculated at Balliol College Oxford on 18 January 1711 as a Snell Exhibitioner from the University of Glasgow and held a Bishop Warner Exhibition from October of the same year. His Jacobite associations cost him both scholarships and his place at Oxford in 1715 when he refused to swear the oaths of allegiance and abjuration following the rising of 1715. Stirling travelled to the Continent - reaching Venice by 1717 - where he supported himself by teaching mathematics and where in the same year he published his first major work Lineae Tertii Ordinis Neutonianae a treatise on the cubic curves that completed and extended Newton's classification appended to Opticks in 1704. The book was dedicated to Newton with whom Stirling had begun corresponding from Venice through Newton's Royal Society colleagues and it secured Stirling's standing in the British mathematical community despite his political exile.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>By 1725 Stirling had returned to London with Newton's personal assistance and was appointed to the staff of William Watts's Academy in Little Tower Street off Covent Garden - one of the leading commercial training schools of the city where Stirling's 1727 syllabus advertised lectures on mechanical and experimental philosophy spanning mechanics hydrostatics optics and astronomy. Newton proposed Stirling for fellowship of the Royal Society; he was elected on 3 November 1726 four months before Newton's death. Throughout his London decade Stirling was a frequent visitor to the aged Newton at his country house at Kensington: "Sr Isaac Newton lives a little way off in the country" he wrote to Maclaurin in 1725 finding Newton kind and serviceable but much enfeebled. The fruit of these London years was Stirling's second and most famous work Methodus Differentialis London 1730 the early classic of numerical analysis containing what are now known as Stirling numbers Stirling's interpolation formula and the asymptotic formula for the logarithm of the factorial that bears his name.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>Abraham de Moivre 1667-1754 the donor had reached England as a Huguenot refugee in 1685 following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and supported himself in London by tutoring the sons of the gentry and by giving mathematical lessons in the coffee-houses of St Martin's Lane. He had become a friend of Newton by about 1692 and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1697. He saw Samuel Clarke's Latin Optice through the press in 1706 the year following Opticks in English; in 1712 he served on the Royal Society's commission alongside Halley Arbuthnot Jones Machin and others that arbitrated the priority dispute between Newton and Leibniz over the calculus and adjudicated in Newton's favour. De Moivre's own publications - De Mensura Sortis 1711; The Doctrine of Chances in three editions 1718 1738 1756; Miscellanea Analytica 1730; the formula linking complex exponentials to trigonometry and the early statement of the central limit theorem - placed him among the foremost probabilists of his century. The story preserved by his Royal Society colleagues that the aged Newton would direct mathematical questioners to him with the words "he knows all these things better than I do" was already current in his lifetime.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The friendship between Stirling and de Moivre was the closest mathematical relationship of the older man's last decades and the most consequential of Stirling's. Stirling's letter to de Moivre of 19 June 1729 preserved in the Royal Society archives and reproduced in Ian Tweddle's annotated translation of Methodus Differentialis Springer 2003 illustrates how Stirling had calculated the coefficient of the middle term of the binomial expansion a bn for large n by means of a logarithmic series; de Moivre who had pursued the same problem for some years was able to extend his earlier results using Stirling's ideas and shortly afterwards published a Supplement to his Miscellanea Analytica. By September 1730 Stirling was relating the new exchange to Gabriel Cramer at Geneva. The joint provenance of the asymptotic formula for n! named after Stirling but resting on de Moivre's earlier "Approximatio ad summam terminorum binomii" has its origin in this exchange. The Methodus Differentialis of 1730 which states the formula in 'Example 2 to Proposition 28' was published two years after the present gift; the book Stirling received from de Moivre in 1728 carried the work of their common master the rejected first draft of Principia into the next mathematical generation.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The dating of the inscription is precise. The Latin De mundi systemate published in London in the second half of 1728 would have come into the hands of the leading London mathematicians within weeks of issue; de Moivre's presentation to Stirling recorded in Stirling's own hand on the front pastedown can therefore be placed in the closing months of 1728 or in early 1729 in the year following Newton's death and within two years of Stirling's election to the Royal Society. The form of the inscription is the recipient's record of the gift not the donor's presentation: it is unsigned by de Moivre and the courtesy form "Dni De Moivre" Domini De Moivre is the standard early-eighteenth-century Latin used between Fellows. The hand is the same as that of Stirling's 1729 letter to de Moivre and of his autograph manuscript of Methodus Differentialis both preserved at Garden House until the same dispersal of October 2025.</p> <br /> <br /> <p>The book is in entirely original condition in the contemporary panelled calf binding it received in London in 1728: the covers framed by double gilt fillets enclosing a recessed central panel the spine in compartments separated by raised bands the red morocco lettering-piece preserving the gilt label 'DE MUNDI SYSTE MAT' with characteristic compartment dotted ornament and the edges sprinkled red. It travelled with Stirling from London to Garden House in or about 1735 when he relinquished his London teaching to take up the management of the Scots Mining Company at Leadhills in Lanarkshire an appointment he held until his retirement; the books and instruments he had assembled in his London years went with him were preserved by his collateral heirs Stirling died unmarried in Edinburgh on 5 December 1770 and remained at Garden House through nine generations of the Stirling family until the dispersal at Lyon & Turnbull on 23 October 2025. In the same sale Stirling's autograph Methodus Differentialis manuscript brought £50400 his own annotated copy of Principia £42840 and the Edinburgh silver pocket microscope by John Clark used in his Leadhills assays a further £42840: the present De mundi systemate stands within the same archive of working tools by which one of Newton's leading disciples carried his mathematics into the next century.</p> <br /> <br /> References: Babson 16 - Wallis 19 - Norman 1593 English translation only - Gray 19 1731 reprint only - Cohen I. B. introduction to A Treatise of the System of the World London & Berkeley 1969 - Gjertsen D. The Newton Handbook London 1986 p. 573 - North J. D. Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology Chicago 2008 p. 418 - Tweddle I. James Stirling's Methodus Differentialis: An Annotated Translation of Stirling's Text London 2003 - Hoskin M. A. 'Newton Providence and the Universe of Stars' Journal for the History of Astronomy 8 1977 pp. 77-101 - Walker H. M. Studies in the History of Statistical Method Baltimore 1929 - The Library of James Stirling Mathematician Lyon & Turnbull Edinburgh 23 October 2025 lot 9.<br /> <br/> <br/> <br /> <p>4to 231 × 177 mm pp. iv 108 with two folding engraved plates of geometrical diagrams Tab. I and Tab. II title printed in red and black with engraved typographic ornament. Contemporary panelled calf covers framed by double gilt fillets enclosing a recessed central panel spine in six compartments with five raised bands red morocco lettering-piece preserving gilt 'DE MUNDI SYSTE MAT' edges sprinkled red. Covers rubbed with surface wear to the recessed central panels spine and joints sound lettering-piece intact.</p> . J. Tonson, J. Osborn & T. Longman unknown
1713181514Cambridge: Printed by Cornelius Crownfield at the University Press 1713. I feign no hypotheses Second edition extensively revised by Newton himself and including the first appearance of the General Scholium: among his last discussions of scientific enquiry and the source of his famed principle "Hypotheses non fingo" "I feign no hypotheses" - p. 484. "The Principia that has shaped Western scientific tracition is substantially the second edition" ODNB. Together with Roger Cotes 1682-1716 Cambridge's Plumian Professor of Astronomy Newton extensively overhauled the Principia over a period of four years: almost 400 of the first edition's 494 pages have been revised here. Alongside the Scholium the pair made particularly extensive annotations to the sections on lunar theory comets and fluid dynamics. Cotes was a gifted mathematician in his own right: after his early death Newton commented that "if he had lived we might have learned something". Cotes's lengthy preface together with Newton's Scholium and the revisions to the text itself helped to fashion the second edition of the Principia into a key text in the lengthy debate between Newton and continental philosophy most particularly that of Leibniz. The "Hypotheses non fingo" principle is directly framed to emphasize Newton's focus on descriptive analysis in contrast to continental speculation over causes. This is one of 750 copies printed at the Cambridge university press under the supervision of Richard Bentley the famed and feared master of Trinity College. Quarto 233 x 191 mm pp. xxviii 484 8. Leaf 3Q2 cancelled. Folding engraved plate facing p. 465 engraved Cambridge University Press printer's device on title page extensive wood-engraved diagrams in text. Recent vellum spine with red morocco label covers with yapp edges edges sprinkled red. With 20th-century engraved bookplate of the noted science collectors Peter and Margarethe Braune. Light finger soiling infrequent minor browning and foxing running wormhole throughout with discreet infill to most leaves and marginal repair to title and leaf b1 contents otherwise crisp and clean: a very good copy indeed. Babson 12; Dibner 11 note; ESTC T93210; Gray 8; Wallis 8. hardcover
1704140946960London: Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford Printers to the Royal Society at the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1704. First Edition. Very Good. First edition first issue of this foundational work in the field of optics in which Isaac Newton explores the nature of light and color presenting his experiments and theories on how light behaves. Title printed in red and black within a double-rule border and without author's name. Bound in contemporary paneled calf boards sympathetically rebacked; with 19 engraved folding plates. <p>Very Good. Soiling to textblock and endsheets bookplate of Irish naturalist John Vandeleur Stewart affixed to the front pastedown ownership signature to title page. Amateur repair to gutter at title page. Numerous pencil notations throughout though mostly confined to the margins or blank areas. Plate 5 is torn at the fold plate 6 with corner loss affecting the image several shaved. Second book with page 120 misnumbered as 112. <p>A lovely copy of Newton's second major book on physical science considered one of the Scientific Revolution's three major works on optics. It overturned centuries of thinking attributed to Aristotle or Theophrastus and accepted by scholars in Newton's time that "pure" light such as the light attributed to the Sun is fundamentally white or colorless and is altered into color by mixture with darkness caused by interactions with matter. Here Newton shows the opposite was true: light is composed of different spectral hues he describes seven – red orange yellow green blue indigo and violet and all colors including white are formed by various mixtures of these hues. He demonstrates that color arises from a physical property of light – each hue is refracted at a characteristic angle by a prism or lens – but he clearly states that color is a sensation within the mind and not an inherent property of material objects or of light itself. <p>Unlike his earlier work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica which took a more deductive approach Opticks is largely experimental and inductive. Newton's study includes detailed descriptions of his experiments with prisms and lenses leading to the conclusion that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors. The work also delves into the phenomena of diffraction and interference which were crucial to the development of wave theory in later years. The work is notable for containing Newton's first mathematical papers in print and for giving the first full explanation of the rainbow complete with related diagrams. Like Galileo Newton decided to publish this text in his native English rather than Latin the language of scholarship; an enlarged Latin edition would be published two years later. Printed for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society, at the Prince's Arms in St. Paul's Church-Yard unknown
1704157612London: Smith & Walford 1704. First. hardcover. very good. Also Two Treatises of the Species and Magnitude of Curvilinear Figures. 4 parts in 1 volume. Title page printed in red & black within a double-ruled border. Illustrated with 19 folding copperplate engravings.4 144 211 1pp. In the second sequence p. 120 is marked 112 and there are blank pages between 137-8 and 138-9. Thick 4to contemporary blind-tooled panelled calf expertly rebacked in matching leather contemporary signature on title dated 1704; last several pages have marginal dampstains otherwise a remarkably clean crisp copy. London: Smith & Walford 1704.<br/><br/> First edition first issue - with the author not named on title page. The work contains: The First Book of Opticks The Second Book of Opticks The Thrid Book of Opticks Tertii Ordinis: Enumeratio Linearum Tractatus de Quadratura Curvarum. The main work is in English the 2 treatises pages 138-211 are in Latin. Babson 132; Gray 174; Horblit 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588; Dibner 148; Wallis 174.<br/><br/> Smith & Walford unknown books
1704157612London: Smith & Walford 1704. First. hardcover. very good. 4 parts in 1 volume. Title page printed in red & black within a double-ruled border. Illustrated with 19 folding copperplate engravings.4 144 211 1 pages. In the second sequence p. 120 is marked 112 and there are blank pages between 137-8 and 138-9. Thick 4to contemporary blind-tooled paneled calf well-worn and now expertly re-backed in sympathetic leather; last several pages have marginal dampstains otherwise a remarkably clean crisp copy. London: Smith & Walford Printers to the Royal Society 1704. First edition first issue - with the author not named on title page.<br/> <br/> "Newton's Opticks expounds his corpuscular theory of light and summarizes his experiments concerning light and colour. It also prints two important mathematical treatises omitted in later editions describing his invention of the fluxional calculus the grounds for his claim of priority over Leibniz. Newton arrived at most of his unconventional ideas on colour by about 1668 and Opticks was largely complete by 1692. However when he first partially expressed his theories in public in 1672 and 1675 they provoked hostile criticism especially on the continent. As a result Newton delayed the publication of Opticks until his most vociferous critics - especially Robert Hooke - were dead. Unusually for Newton and in what was probably a further defensive move the work was first published in English rather than Latin becoming a major contribution to the development of vernacular scientific literature. By about 1715 Opticks established itself as a model for interweaving theory with quantitative experimentation. Newton's aim was not to "explain the properties of light by hypotheses but to propose and prove them by reason and experiments" p. 1. The great achievement of the work was to show that colour was a mathematically definable property."<BR> <BR> The work contains: The First Book of Opticks The Second Book of Opticks The Thrid Book of Opticks Tertii Ordinis: Enumeratio Linearum Tractatus de Quadratura Curvarum. The main work is in English the 2 treatises pages 138-211 are in Latin. Babson 132; Gray 174; Horblit 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588; Dibner 148; Wallis 174.Provenance: Signature of Francis Cremer the initial owner & contemporary of Newton's dated 1704 is on the title page with the price he paid of 12 shillings. Another ownership signature "Gul Bryant" also a sudent at Cambridge some decades later is on the rear flyleaf and the library label of Francis E. Nipher 1847- 1926 the American physicist on the front paste-down.<br/> <br/> Smith & Walford unknown
17875001062HMS Sirius Portsmouth 1787. Slight tear on the edge of address panel where it was originally opened occasional wear and splitting at folds sealed tear. Quarto three pages and address leaf manuscript in ink on paper with original wax seal two filing holes in lower margin of each leaf; stamped "Gosport" small collector's stamp with manuscript cancellation. <p><p>A wonderful original letter by Newton Fowell the eighteen-year-old midshipman on HMS Sirius whose moving and evocative letters from the First Fleet have been one of the treasures of the State Library of New South Wales since they were acquired in 1987. This candid letter to his father John Fowell of Black Hall North Huish Devon is dated "Sirius 10 May 1787" and was written aboard the flagship of the First Fleet just three days before she set sail for Botany Bay.</p> <p>Newton Fowell was a well-connected "young gentleman" seaman whose family sought the sponsorship of Captain John Hunter and Evan Nepean to ensure his late inclusion in the First Fleet expedition. He joined the Sirius in February 1787 and was the last officer to do so apart from Arthur Phillip himself. In earlier letters to his father Fowell had expressed his impatience at the endless delays in departing. Yet in this letter when their final departure was imminent he was somewhat caught off guard: 'Capt Philip sic came on board yesterday and talks of sailing tomorrow how that will be I cannot say but the Wind at Present is fair'.</p> <p>Fowell describes the haste with which the men were called aboard: 'we had no great notice to get ready. I have some Linen on shore which if I cannot get to day will be left behind' and bemoans the tardiness of receiving their pay: 'We have not yet been paid any Advance it will be paid today and supposed only two Months the Men Murmur very much as most of them have 6 Months Pay due.'.</p> <p>By all accounts Fowell acquitted himself honourably during the nine-month voyage to Botany Bay and was the first officer to receive a promotion after their arrival: a fellow officer on Sirius described him as 'that very Deserving Young Man. Ordered to Act as Lieut. I have Every Reason to Suppose him for the first Promotion. I think him by far the Most Deserving Young Man in the Ship'.</p> <p>Fowell made three further voyages as lieutenant: the rapid circumnavigation with Hunter to the Cape of Good Hope and back on the Sirius and another to Norfolk Island on the Supply during which the Sirius was wrecked. His final voyage was to Batavia on a mission to purchase a replacement for the Sirius and obtain desperately-needed provisions. Having safely reached Batavia Fowell succumbed to the notorious Batavia fever and died aged twenty-two. On 14 March 1791 Phillip wrote to the Admiralty reporting on recent events 'The Supply lost five men in the voyage and left six in the Hospital in Batavia. Mr Newton Fowell who I had appointed second lieutenant of the Sirius when Lieutenant King was sent to Norfolk Island and the gunner of the Sirius likewise died on the Voyage. Both these officers were to have been landed at Norfolk Island had the Supply made it in her passage to Batavia'.</p> <p>The vast majority of First Fleet manuscripts are held institutionally; this example once in the Webster collection is a rare exception. The thirteen letters by Fowell held by the State Library of New South Wales and published in 1988 The Sirius Letters: The Complete Letters of Newton Fowell 1786-1790 give detailed reports of the voyage and the arrival of the Sirius in Port Jackson and difficulties of the first two years of settlement. They form a series which was earlier thought to be complete.</p> </p> . unknown
17294526London: For Benjamin Mott 1729. first Edition in English. Two vols. 8vo. 19 x 11 cm. Paginated: 36 320; 2 393 13; viii 3 4-71 1 pp. Collation = Ad 1: pi1 A2 2A8 a8 B-X8. Ad 2: pi1 B-Z8 Aa-Cc8 Dd3 lacking blank leaf Dd4 as commonly; a4 A-D8 E4 with cancel C1 headling = "Gentium"; stain on fols. b7-8 and c1-2. Lacking engraved allegorical frontispiece to each volume not unusually. With 47 engraved folding plates numbered 1-25 and 1-19 with 3 unnumbered plates at rear of volume 2 2 folding letterpress tables 3 engraved headpieces. Bound in contemporary English sprinkled calf very minor wear wear along binding extremities spines with red morocco lettering pieces gilt black oval volume numbers gilt old shelf labels in MS on paper circles "30". BEAUTIFUL COPY OF THE FIRST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION OF THE GREATEST WORK IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE "PERHAPS THE GREATEST INTELLECTUAL STRIDE THAT IT HAS EVER BEEN GRANTED TO ANY MAN TO MAKE" EINSTEIN. <br /> <br /> "The Principia is generally described as the greatest work in the history of science. These provided the great synthesis of the cosmos proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of gravitation could be explained in mathematical terms within a single physical theory. With him the separation of natural and supernatural of sublunar and superlunar worlds disappeared" Bernard Cohen Introduction in The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 1968.<br /> <br /> PMM: "Copernicus Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed Newton explained the underlying laws." Originally published in Latin in 1687 the Principia "marked the culmination of the scientific revolution . ushered in modern science and through its legacy the work may have done more to shape the modern world than any other ever published" ODNB. Newton here laid the foundation for classical mechanics establishing the three laws of motion and universal gravitation. It is universally considered a masterpiece that unified physical laws of the heavens and earth. <br /> <br /> This finely printed translation into English by Mott made the work available to a wider lay audience. This edition also contains John Machin's attempt to rectify Newton's lunar theory "The Laws of the Moon's Motion according to Gravity." Most copies have an engraved frontispiece in each volume although some have only one Ransom Center etc. while a surprising number have neither of them as here including the Gonville and Caius copy at Cambridge University M.26.7-8. Because the book has been of enduring interest for almost 300 years with commensurately heavy use copies as fresh as this in contemporary bindings are of genuine rarity.<br /> <br /> Babson 20. Wallis 23. PMM 161. For Benjamin Mott unknown
17045582London: Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford Printers to the Royal Society 1704. Hardcover. Near Fine. 4to. 24.2 x 18.8 cm. 2 ff. 144 pp. 211 pp 1 pp. with 19 folding engraved plates. Bound in contemporary English paneled calf. Minor ribbing to binding. Only very minor marginal traces of use. Very genuine. Excellent. First edition first issue of this landmark in science by Sir Isaac Newton 1642-1727 here in a remarkably well preserved unrestored example. "The work summarized Newton's discoveries and theories concerning light and color: the spectrum of the sunlight the degrees of refraction associated with different colors the color circle the first in the history of color theory the invention of the reflecting telescope the first workable theory of the rainbow and experiments on what would later be called 'interference effects' in conjunction with Newton's rings . . . The first edition of the Opticks ends with two mathematical treatises in Latin written to establish his priority over Leibnitz in the invention of the calculus" Norman 1588. Babson 132; Dibner 148; Horblit 79b; PMM 172; Norman 1588; Wallis 174. <br/> <br/> Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, Printers to the Royal Society hardcover books
