The Principia......amazing

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KL7AJ

Joined Nov 4, 2008
2,229
For my birthday, I got a copy (in English) of Isaac Newton's "Principia"...the book everyone is supposed to have read but never has. I am blown away by the first sentence, which is merely a definition of mass. The lucid thinking in this tome is without peer....of course everybody knows this....but this is such a great reminder of where we came from. The things the man did with a protractor and parchment.......I am in awe.
 

Thread Starter

KL7AJ

Joined Nov 4, 2008
2,229
My adventures in Isaac Newton's, The Principia, continued:

In his definition of centripetal force:

"...Of this sort is gravity, by which bodies tend to the center of the Earth, magnetism, by which iron tends toward the lodestone, and that force, what ever it is, by which the planets are perpetually drawn aside from the rectilinear motions, which otherwise they pursue, and made to revolve in curvilinear orbits......"

Isn't it amazing that in 1688 nobody was sure about interplanetary gravity....of course, Newton was instrumental in opening up people's eyes.
 

Kermit2

Joined Feb 5, 2010
4,162
I could do better...if only I had a safe space that prevented all that CHALK from triggering my post traumatic cisgendered hetero normative racist thought loops.

Censor me Daddy! :)
 

atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
4,764
For my birthday, I got a copy (in English) of Isaac Newton's "Principia"...the book everyone is supposed to have read but never has. I am blown away by the first sentence, which is merely a definition of mass. The lucid thinking in this tome is without peer....of course everybody knows this....but this is such a great reminder of where we came from. The things the man did with a protractor and parchment.......I am in awe.
Would you mind posting that sentence? Thanks.
 
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