SOURCE: "The Thrice-Revealed Newton," in Editing Texts in the History of Science and Medicine: Papers Given at the Seventeenth Annual Conference on Editorial Problems, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982, pp. 117-84.

[In the following, which was first delivered as a lecture in 1981, Cohen shows how Newton's interests and works have been revealed in three stages: in the material Newton himself chose to publish; in the manuscripts that were discovered and published after his death; and in the remaining manuscripts, correspondence, notebooks, and annotated texts that were sold at auction in 1936 by Newton's family. Furthermore, Cohen discusses the relevance of such findings, arguing that they demonstrate, amonig other things, the importance of Descartes' work in the development of Newton's own thought.]

The First Revelation

I have entitled my presentation "the thrice-revealed Newton" because we have learned about Isaac Newton in a succession of three revelations. First of all, there was the Newton revealed by his own choice of material to be published. For Newton, "published" has the sense of being made public, that is, it includes distribution of long-hand copies and is not limited to works put into print. In Newton's lifetime, this revelation was made through the Principles, the Opticks, his famous letter on the production of prismatic colors and the nature of white light, certain tracts on mathematics, and his study of The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended.' Newton thus showed himself to the world as a mathematician and mathematical physicist and astronomer, a master of experiment, and a careful reasoner about questions of chronology and succession related to Scripture. There was also circulated a paper entitled "De natura acidorum," which revealed some of Newton's chemical (and possibly alchemical) interests and speculations.² But the major image that Newton showed to the world was that of the prince of reason in an age in which reason was highly esteemed.

The major revelation of Newton the scientist was made in his celebrated Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Here was a cold, formal, logical presentation, in which—apparently—a rational system of the world was deduced by logic and mathematics from a series of first principles or "axioms" which Newton designated as "Axioms, or Laws of Motion," following upon a series of Definitions.³ Second to the Principles was the Opticks, a non-mathematical treatise on "The Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light."⁴ For about a century and a half, with a few exceptions,⁵ the image of Newton that dominated the thinking of men and women was that of a mathematician and physicist who was the highest representative of the Augustan Age, the Age of Reason.

This image of Newton was celebrated in verse, in sculpture, in painting. Newton was seen in the role of law-giver of nature, or at least the agent who, by the exercise of his reason, had revealed nature's laws.⁶ This was expressed succinctly in Alexander Pope's couplet:

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, Let Newton be, and all was light.

For many people of that Augustan Age, the twin luminaries of reason were Isaac Newton and the philosopher of common sense, John Locke.⁷ These were two heroes to Thomas Jefferson, who ordered portraits of them, along with a portrait of a third great Englishman, Francis Bacon, so that the three could adorn the walls of his study, as they do to this day.⁸

In order to present such an image of himself to the world, Newton had to make a very careful selection from among his writings or among the subjects of his interest, putting aside his explorations of theology, including interpretations of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation.⁹ He had equally to conceal a long-abiding passion for alchemy¹⁰ and his belief in priscan knowledge, a belief that much of the science that we know today was but a rediscovery of the wisdom known to ancient sages and seers.¹¹ On Newton's death, in 1727, the executors of his estate bundled up the manuscripts on these strange or esoteric subjects and marked them with the words that still remain for all to see who study Newton's manuscripts in the University Library at Cambridge or in the library of King's College,¹² "Not fit to be printed."¹³

This side of Newton, however, could not be totally hidden. Although later generations of scientists and philosophers hailed Newton as a positivies,¹⁴ as a hard-headed scientist, there are traces to be found in the writings that Newton allowed to be published of the "other" Newton, even though our complete knowledge of the "other" Newton had to await a second and even a third revelation. For instance, the so-called positivist Newton says plainly in the General Scholium, which he wrote for the second edition of the Principles (1713),¹⁵

Hitherto I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity.… It is enough that gravity really exists and acts according to the laws set forth by us and can produce all the motions of the heavenly bodies and of our sea.

But the non-positivist¹⁶ Newton says in that very same General Scholium that to discuss God "on the basis of phenomena belongs to experimental philosophy," a sentence somewhat toned down in the third edition (1726) to read that a discussion of God on the basis of phenomena belongs to "natural philosophy." And in the Opticks, in the queries added to the Latin edition of 1706 and printed in the second English edition of 1717/18,¹⁷ Newton twice called space the sensorium of God, which—after the book had been printed—he slightly toned down in one place (but not in the other) by adding the Latin word "tanquam"—meaning "as it were."¹⁸

That Newton was concerned with theological questions, and that he was concerned with them in direct relation to his science, was also made apparent by other portions of the Principles and the Opticks. For example, in the first edition of the Principles, Newton refers to God's wisdom in creating the planets of such relative masses and densities that those which are nearest to the sun could best withstand the sun's heat."⁹ And in the second edition of the Principles the concluding General Scholium (to which I have just referred) begins with a somewhat similar argument: that the solar system, with the planets all encircling the sun in approximately a single plane, all moving in the same direction, and with their satellites similarly arranged, could not come into being without the active intervention of a divine being.²⁰ Although we tend to concentrate on the penultimate paragraph of the General Scholium, in which Newton seems almost to argue like a positivist and where we find his famous slogan, Hypotheses non fingo ("I feign [or frame]²¹ no hypotheses"), most of that General Scholium, some 80% or so, is devoted to the being, attributes, and name of God.

In the Opticks, in the later versions, in both the Latin edition of 1706 and the English edition of 1717/18, Newton not only talks about the way in which God created the world in terms of indivisible, non-wearing, everlasting atomic particles, but discusses the relation of science and morality, the corruptions of the sons of Noah, and other questions of a theological nature—not all of which are directly related to science.²² For the cognoscenti, there were also references in the Opticks to nature's delight in making transmutations,²³ which may possibly have been read as a hint concerning the great man's interest in alchemy, the science of transmutation. It must be admitted, however, that Newton also uses the word transmutation for the changes that occur constantly around us by natural processes, and even for certain changes that occur in projective geometry, i.e., the "transmutation" of geometric figures.²⁴ The third and final book of Newton's Principles (1687) opens with a series of "Hypotheses," which in the later editions were largely divided into "Phenomena" and "Rules for Natural Philosophy";²⁵ the third "Hypothesis"²⁶ stated that "all matter can be transformed into matter of any other kind and successively undergo all the intermediate stages of qualities."²⁷ It must be said at once, however, that this particular statement was given by Newton without explanation; it was not really used in the rest of Book Three of the Principles, of which it was part of the introductory section.²⁸ Furthermore, it was labeled "Hypothesis III," which could have indicated that it was introduced for discussion as a hypothesis and was not necessarily a firm statement of Newton's own belief.²⁹

We now know, however, that during the 1690's Newton planned to add certain additional scholiums to the third book of his Principles, in which he would give rein to some of his extravagant and certainly non-positivistic ideas. In part, he would include here some extracts from the De rerum natura of the Roman poet Lucretius and would also explain his idea that the ancient sages had a knowledge of nature which included even the law of universal gravity.³⁰ But apparently he thought better of this idea, and that revelation was made only about 300 years later, when his manuscript annotations in preparation for a new edition of the Principles were discovered and published.³¹

Newton's Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended was circulated by Newton, but not intended to be printed.³² Yet soon this work was in general circulation and did get into print.³³ It is not a very daring book for a rationalist or positivist. In developing his subject, Newton did assume that—among other things—the voyage of the "good ship Argo" was a real event and that one could believe all the accounts of the Argonauts and their search for the Golden Fleece, as reported by Apollonius of Rhodes, and similar kinds of events of the past. On this basis Newton essentially attempted to make a rational reconstruction of past events. He assumed that the precession of the equinoxes has been constant over the ages; he found in the literature of the past certain statements which he took as evidence of the appearance (visibility and position) of constellations and consequently as a basis for computing the dates of those alleged celestial observations. This is, in short, to some degree, a "scientific chronology" based on clearly stated hypotheses or assumptions. The point is that this endeavor is based on rational procedures.³⁴ The only part of such an analysis which would make us question its being worthy of the author of the great Principles or the Opticks would be the degree of Newton's credulity about what he assumes to have been actual historical events. Furthermore, we might be a little astonished that the prince of rationalism and the greatest scientist of his age should have devoted so much of his time and energy to the study of biblical history and the annals of ancient history, which—by companrson—would seem to us to have been a somewhat trivial occupation.

Newton's anti-Trinitarian views, on the other hand, were more carefully kept private.³⁵ The nearest to a "public" work relating to interpretation of Scripture, as opposed to purely chronological aspects of Scripture, was his study of the Book of Revelation, published shortly after his death.³⁶ It may be pointed out, however, that in Newton's day it would not have seemed unusual for a mathematical scientist to occupy himself with this subject. There was, in fact, that prior example of John Napier, Laird of Merchiston, known to us as the inventor of logarithms, who also produced a lengthy treatise on the Book of Revelation.³⁷

In this work, Newton's aim was to interpret the prophecies to find out what they meant, but—as Frank Manuel has shown³⁸—stopping short of actually making predictions of the future.³⁹ In evaluating this work, we must remember that in those days in Britain there was produced an enormous mass of literature concerning prophecy.⁴⁰ In the fourth decade of the 17th century, a Cambridge man, Joseph Mede of Christ's, had invented a rather new way of reading the prophetic literature, producing an innovation in method that Manuel has likened to a Copernican revolution⁴¹ and that his contemporary "admirers glorified as equal in importance to Aristotle's syllogistic reasoning."⁴² Newton's method of studying prophecy depended greatly on the work of Mede. I shall not go into the details of the method,⁴³ but it should be noted that Newton did not proceed by attempting a mystical union with the authors of the prophetic texts. For the most part his method was based on rational procedures and had the appearance of a "scientific" inquiry. Manuel has noted⁴⁴ that some Cambridge drafts of this work "used formal scientific" headings like 'Propositiones' and 'Lemmata'." This "scientific" aspect of Newton's work is plainly displayed in a general introduction to one of the Keynes manuscripts in King's College, Cambridge, entitled "The First Book Concerning the Language of the Prophets" (complete in itself in 152 pages; 50,000 words). Here Newton explains his method.

He that would understand a book written in a strange language must first learn the language, and if he would understand it well must learn the language perfectly. Such a language was that wherein the Prophets wrote, and the want of sufficient skill in that language is the main reason why they are so little understood. John did not write in one language, Daniel in another, Isaiah in a third, and the rest in others peculiar to themselves, but they all write in one and the same mystical language … [which], so far as I can find, was as certain and definite in its signification as is the vulgar language of any nation… ⁴⁵

This is the basic premise of the work. Next Newton explains that "it is only through want of skill therein that Interpreters so frequently turn the Prophetic types and phrases to signify whatever their fancies and hypotheses lead them to." As with Cartesian philosophical romances, it was owing to ignorance that hypotheses took the place of correct explanations based on fact. The main procedural principle was stated as follows:

The Rule I have followed has been to compare the several mystical places of scripture where the same prophetic phrase or type is used, and to fix such a signification to that phrase as agrees best with all the places: … and, when I had found the necessary significations, to reject all others as the offspring of luxuriant fancy, for no more significations are to be admitted for true ones than can be proved.

This statement sounds so much like the Rules at the beginning of Book Three of the Principles that it may well serve to illustrate the essential oneness of Newton's thought. It embodies the proper approach of a man who believes in the experimental (empirical) philosophy, and we shall see that a similar point of view may be found in Newton's studies of alchemy.

The published book of Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John⁴⁶ deals with this same problem of "the Prophetic Language"—a "figurative language" used by the Prophets and "taken from the analogy between the world natural, and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic." Essentially the whole matter turns on Daniel's prophecy concerning the Messiah, and the preliminary prophetic statements about an "Image composed of four Metals" and a stone which broke "the four Metals to pieces." These are the four nations successively ruling the earth (viz the people of Babylonia, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans). The four nations are represented again in the "four Beasts." Reading through Newton's text is an exercise in history and a rather dull one. Here is no ecstasy of a mystic St Teresa or St John of the Cross, but a seemingly endless parade of dated events, lists of kings, battles, and successions, and an attempt to place all of them into a chronological frame that is more reminiscent of Newton's own Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended than of the mystical writings of a Boehme. "The folly of Interpreters," says Newton, has been "to foretel times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets." This was, however, far from God's intent, according to Newton, for the prophecies were meant by God "not to gratify men's curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things" but rather to stand as witnesses to God's providence when "after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event." Surely, he said, "the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence." Nor is the Observations free from reference to Newton's favorite themes of the corruption of scripture and the corruption of Christianity.⁴⁷

Newton died intestate in March 1727. Since he never married and had no children there inevitably arose a quarrel among his surviving relatives over the division of his estate—which we know amounted to "a considerable fortune."⁴⁸ Newton's papers were inventoried and evaluated for the heirs, and it was agreed that "only the Chronology &Prophecies [were] fitt to be appraised"—the value of £250 was set for the Chronology "& no value upon the Prophecies they being imperfect."⁴⁹ Thomas Pellet, a Fellow of the Royal Society, gave his own examination, and most of Newton's manuscripts to this day bear his annotation, to which I have referred earlier, "Not fit to be printed." Very likely—as Whiteside reminds us—this remark has nothing to do with what we would consider the scholarly or intrinsic intellectual value of Newton's manuscripts, papers, or notebooks, but rather relates strictly to their "fitness" as complete works ready for printing and accordingly having monetary value.

A description of the evaluation of Newton's papers was written by John Conduitt, the husband of Newton's niece and Newton's successor at the Mint. Conduitt hoped to preserve as intact as possible all the remaining writings of the great man into whose family he had married. He relates that, according to Dr Pellet, there were only five works which were possibly in a state "fitt to be printed."⁵⁰ These included the Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, sold for £350 and printed for J. Tonson, the Strand bookseller; what was described as "A Mathematical tract De Motu Corporum," sold to Tonson for £31-10 and printed under the editorship of John Conduitt with the confusing title De mundi systemate;⁵¹ Newton's work on the prophecies, published under the title Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (printed in 1733 by" J. Darby and T. Browne in Bartholomew Close"); a set of "Paradoxical Questions concerning Athanasius" which remains unpublished to this day, although extracts were published by David Brewster in his two-volume biography of Newton in 1855,⁵² further extracts published by H. McLachlan in 1950,⁵³ and further extracts by F. E. Manuel in 1963;⁵⁴ and, finally, what is described as "an Imperfect Mathematical tract," probably—according to Whiteside⁵⁵—a combination of "the unfinished 1666 English and 1671 Latin fluxional tracts … which Horsley was to find packaged together in 1777."

Conduitt attempted to prepare a biography of Newton, of which we have many fragmentary drafts, containing extracts from letters and biographical accounts which Conduitt solicited from many of those who knew Newton; these are precious documents for any biographer.⁵⁶ But Conduitt never took care to order, to catalogue in detail, or even to find a proper repository for the unpublished manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence, and other documents belonging to Newton.⁵⁷ His wife Catherine, Newton's niece," was especially anxious to publish the papers of her famous uncle dealing with problems of religion and chronology; her will contains a codicil in which her executor is directed to "lay all the Tracts relating to Divinity before Dr. Sykes … in hopes he will prepare them for the press.…" Further, "I ordain" that "all of them … shall be printed and published, so as they be done with care and exactness." She noted that in relation to "whatever proffit may arise from the same, my dear Mr. Conduitt has given a bond of £2000 to be responsible to the seven nearest of kin to Sir Is. Newton." Therefore, she declared, "the papers must be carefully kept" and "no copys may be taken and printed." Additionally, "Dr. Sykes [is] desired to peruse them here, otherways if any accident comes to them the penalty of the Bond will be levy'd."⁵⁹ Apparently, "no new work of Isaac Newton's appeared in the stationers' catalogues"⁶⁰ until the Latin version of the 1671 fluxional tract was published fifty years later as part of the five-volume edition of Newton's Opera edited by Samuel Horsley.

John Conduitt died in May 1737, his wife Catherine in January 1739. Then Newton's papers passed to their daughter, who married John Wallop, who became Viscount Lymington when his father was created the first Earl of Portsmouth in 1743. These precious documents⁶¹ remained in the Portsmouth family until, as we shall see, the "scientific portion" came to the University of Cambridge in the late 1880's and the rest were dispersed at public auction in the 1930's.

For various reasons, Horsley's five-volume edition of Newton's Opera does not contain any considerable new manuscript material, an exception being the selections from Newton's correspondence with Oldenburg which appear in Volume Four.⁶² Horsley apparently was allowed to see the family collection too late to make any extensive use of it, for "his first volume [was] already in press in London and anxiously awaited by his subscribers."⁶³ Accordingly, in the mathematical field he only "suitably improved certain texts already scheduled for publication by collating them with the manuscript (notably emending the text of the "Geometria analytica,") which he had previously derived from two inferior copies, one indeed derivative from the other.…" A creative editor by the standards of his time, Horsley did make divisions, for example into chapters and paragraphs, and he provided valuable annotations for his edition of the Opticks, in which he indicated important changes in the queries from edition to edition, which have stood until our own times as the only major attempt to delineate the development of Isaac Newton's ideas on the nature of light, atoms, aether, particulate forces, and chemistry, as expressed in the queries.

The Second Revelation

The works in print by the end of the decade following Newton's death provided the world with an image of Newton and a knowledge of his mathematical and scientific acheivements that remained essentially unaltered for a century or more. The second revelation really began in about the middle of the 19th century, with the publication in 1855 of the two volumes of David Brewster's massive biography of Newton, with its extensive appendixes containing new texts published from manuscript sources.

Brewster's biography was only one of four important works published in the middle of the 19th century, each containing new material based upon manuscripts relating to Isaac Newton. The first was a collection by S. P. Rigaud (1838) containing documents chiefly relating to Newton's Principles with an important introduction. Rigaud published for the first time the text of the tract De motu which Newton wrote out after Halley's famous visit in 1684 and which is the first organized and complete statement of his analysis of elliptical orbital motion and his proof that if elliptical orbits result from the action of a central force on a body, the force must vary inversely as the square of the distance.⁶⁴ Rigaud also began a two-volume collection of correspondence in the possession of the Earl of Macclesfield, which contains valuable correspondence by and to Isaac Newton and the correspondence of others which is related to Newton. This collection, begun and organized by Rigaud, was finally published by his son in 1841, but an index was added by Augustus De Morgan only a number of years later (1862). A third work, one of the most valuable contributions to Newtonian scholarship ever produced, was the edition in 1850 of the letters which passed between Newton and Cotes (who prepared the second edition of the Principles under Newton's direction) and which are preserved in a large volume in the Trinity College Library. This exemplary work, with very illuminating and important notes by the editor, Joseph Edleston, is preceded by an extremely valuable detailed chronology of Newton's life, filled in with important documentary materials, such as Newton's entrances and exits from Trinity College according to the Register Book.

These three works filled out many details concerning Newton's scientific thought, but they do not really constitute a major revelation about Newton. That was reserved for David Brewster's two-volume biography (1855) with extensive documentary appendices.⁶⁵ It has been assumed, as L. T. More (a later biographer of Newton) asserted, that Brewster "made a very considerable use of Conduitt's manuscripts and of abstracts from Newton's correspondence, and some use of the mathematical notes and papers [but] used his discretion in extracting and in omitting many important documents which seemed to him not advantageous to Newton's reputation.⁶⁶ But Whiteside has shown that "Brewster was apparently never allowed unrestricted access to the Portsmouth manuscripts but limited almost wholly to the selection of biographically pertinent material, letters and papers selected for him by [Henry] Fellowes."⁶⁷ Brewster himself, as Whiteside has noted, is rather explicit on this matter:

In this examination [of "the large mass of papers which Sir Isaac had left behind him"] our attention was particularly directed to such letters and papers as were calculated to throw light upon his early and academical life, and, with the assistance of Mr. Fellowes, who copied for me several important documents, I was enabled to collect many valuable materials unknown to preceding biographers.…

The materials … are of great value; and in so far as Mr. H. A. Fellowes and I could make an abstract of these and other manuscripts during a week's visit at [Hurstbourne] Park, I have availed myself of them in composing the first volume of this work, which was printed before the papers themselves came into my hands.⁶⁸

For the second volume, Brewster says that "I had the good fortune to obtain from the Earl of Portsmouth the collection of manuscripts and correspondence which the late Mr. H. A. Fellowes had examined and arranged as peculiarly fitted to throw light on the Life and Discoveries of Sir Isaac."⁶⁹

Brewster has often been castigated for the fact that he so adulated his hero that he referred to Newton even in his school days as "young Sir Isaac," even though Newton was not knighted until old age. He was also criticized for having again and again called Newton the "High Priest of Science." Yet it must be kept in mind that the phrase "High Priest of Science" was not of Brewster's own invention but was merely taken over by him from what is perhaps the first true biography of Newton, by William Stukeley,⁷⁰ who wrote a short version to be used by Conduitt in preparing his own biography of Newton. Stukeley did a considerable amount of research, it should be noted, and he even submitted Newton to an oral-history interview, thereby inaugurating that practice in the history of science. Stukeley relates that when he asked Newton how he came to think of the law of universal gravity, Newton replied that it was while sitting in a garden, much as he was while having tea with Stukeley.⁷¹ Apparently, therefore, Newton himself was the originator of the apple story.⁷² I have long considered that Stukeley's actions may serve as an object lesson to all historians of science. He had a unique opportunity to ask Newton: And what were the circumstances? How did the falling of an apple bring this idea into your mind? In what year did this occur? What had you been thinking about at that time? But Stukeley merely went on to the next subject.⁷³

What is probably of the greatest significance in Brewster's two-volume life is the fact that for the first time in print some real indication was given of Newton's actual manuscript writings on theology and alchemy. With regard to the latter, Brewster was quite shocked to find that the "High Priest of Science" not only had been a devotee of alchemy, but had copied out (in his own hand) works that Brewster could only describe as foul and characterized by charlatanry.⁷⁴ He also wanted it believed that one of Newton's major aims in studying alchemy was to discredit the pretensions of that subject. Yet, for all that, Brewster had to admit: "There is no problem of more difficult solution than that which relates to the belief in alchemy, and to the practice of its arts, by men of high character and lofty attainments."⁷⁵ Brewster pointed out that there are remarkable changes in nature, such as that gold and silver and other metals "may be extracted from transparent crystals, which scarcely differ in their appearance from a piece of common salt or a bit of sugar-candy."⁷⁶ He also said that it is astonishing that aluminum "can be extracted from clay," or that "lights of the most dazzling colours can be obtained from the combustion of colourless salts," or that "gas, giving the most brilliant light, resides in a lump of coal or a block of wood." Need we then wonder, says Brewster, "that the most extravagant expectations were entertained of procuring from the basest materials the precious metals and the noblest gems."⁷⁷

But how really could men of such rational character and scientific soundness—Newton, Boyle, and Locke—give their thie and intellectual energy to the study of alchemy? Of course, said Brewster, the "ambition neither of wealth nor of praise prompted their studies." He pompously declared: "We may safely say that a love of truth alone, a desire to make new discoveries in chemistry, and a wish to test the extraordinary pretensions of their predecessors and their contemporaries, were the only motives by which they were actuated."⁷⁸ Thus, he continued, "insofar as Newton's inquiries were limited to the transmutation and multiplication of metals, and even to the discovery of the universal tincture, we may find some apology for his researches."⁷⁹ But Brewster quite frankly admitted his own complete inability to "understand how a mind of such power, and so nobly occupied with the abstractions of geometry, and the study of the material world, could stoop to be even the copyist of the most contemptible alchemical poetry, and the annotator of a work, the obvious production of a fool and a knave." Yet he was forced to explain: "Such, however, was the taste of the century in which Newton lived, and, when we denounce the mental epidemics of the past age, we may find some palliation of them in those of our own times."⁸⁰ Brewster sadly admitted the fact and there was nothing he could do about it, but he did conclude with the expression of a pious belief that "there is reason to believe" that Newton "had learned to have but little confidence even in the humbler department of the multiplication of metals." Forsooth!

Brewster was honest enough to admit that he had seen in Newton's own handwriting The Metamorphoses of the Planets by John De Monte Snyders together with a key to it, plus "numerous pages of alchemist poetry," chiefly from Norton's Ordinal and Basil Valentine's Mystery of the Microcosm. He also had seen a copy of Secrets Revealed, Or an Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of the King, "covered with notes in Sir Isaac's hand, in which great changes are made upon the language and meaning of the thirty-five chapters of which it consists."⁸¹ And so on. Brewster did not hide from the world the fact that Newton made "copious extracts from the writings of the alchemists of all ages," and that he produced a "very large Index Chemicus and Supplementum Indicis Chemici, with minute references to the different subjects to which they relate."⁸² Who could doubt that Newton had been a serious student of alchemy, even making alchemical experiments during his most creative period of life, the 1680's, while writing the Principles?

With regard to theology, the problem was somewhat different for Brewster. He had earlier published a one-volume work in which he asserted that Newton was certainly a believer In the Trinity and orthodox.⁸³ But now, having had access to the manuscripts, from which he quoted at length, he had to tone down his earlier assertion. Painful as it must have been for him, Brewster did print a number of texts and extracts from the manuscripts which make it obvious that Newton had strong Unitarian or Arian leanings.⁸⁴

On the more positive side, Brewster assembled sound evidence to prove that Biot had made an error in assuming that Newton's interest in theology arose in his old age, when he was in his dotage and unable to do any more creative work in mathematics and the sciences. And Brewster made available an enornous amount of new documentary information concerning Newton's creative scientific career, the development and reception of his ideas and their philosophical implications, and the facts of Newton's life. But although Brewster did show that there was substance in the rumors concerning Newton's pursuit of alchemy and interest in theology, this second revelation did not inspire scholars to attempt to make a further study of Newton's manuscripts (which might have proved impossible in any event). Thus Brewster's biography remained the standard source for knowledge of Newton's religious beliefs until the third revelation, which has only occurred in the last decades.

Between the Second and Third Revelations

A number of significant events occurred between the second and third revelations. In July 1872, two eminent Cambridge mathematicians, Professor John Couch Adams and Professor Sir George G. Stokes, went to Hurstbourne Park "to look over the Newton papers"⁸⁵ and to report back to the university concerning them. When Adams and Stokes saw the vast size and variety of the collection, they quickly realized that they could not study these manuscripts in the time of a brief visit. Lord Portsmouth graciously agreed to send all of the papers, including "two copies of the Principia Ist & 2nd Editions corrected by Newton" and "a Number of Fragments relating to Mathematics," plus "some very interesting letters from Eminent Men to Newton" and "memoranda Books &c relating to personal matters."⁸⁶ Lord Portsmouth made it clear, however, that he was only "willing to lend' most of these items. It was his "wish," he said, "to advance the interests of science by placing these Papers at the service of the University, but [he concluded] I would rather cut my hand off than sever my connection with Newton which is the proudest Boast of my Family."⁸⁷

It was evidently the wish of the Earl of Portsmouth "to make … over to the University" the papers and correspondence relating to science, since he believed "that these would find a more appropriate home in the Library of Newton's own University than in that of a private individual."^87a

Newton's manuscripts, correspondence, and papers were studied in Cambridge over the next 16 years by a syndicate composed of Adams and Stokes plus the Reverend Henry Richards Luard (Registrary of the University and Perpetual Curate of Great St Mary's) and George Downing Liveing (of St John's College, professor of chemistry). This syndicate produced a catalogue of the collection⁸⁸ after they had made a laborious examination and classification. They divided the collection into two parts, half of which was given by the Earl of Portsmouth to the University Library, where it is usually referred to as the Portsmouth Collection,⁸⁹ and the remainder returned to the Earl. The syndicate noted that the job "has proved a lengthy and laborious business, as many of the papers were found to be in great confusion—mathematical notes being often inserted in the middle of theological treatises, and even numbered leaves of MSS. having got out of order. Moreover a large portion of the collection has been grievously damaged by fire and damp. The correspondence, however, is in a very fair condition throughout, and had been arranged in an orderly manner."⁹⁰

It should be noted that the catalogue covers the whole collection of Newton's books and papers, not merely the portion given to the University. The preface of 20 pages begins with a two-page summary of the history of the manuscripts and an account of the committee's activities, then devotes two pages to Newton's work on the lunar theory, two pages to Newton's work on refraction, half a page to the determination of "the form of the solid of least resistance," and two pages to the extensive manuscript materials relating to Newton's quarrel with Leibniz over priority in the invention of the calculus.⁹¹ A whole page is devoted to an autobiographical statement about how Newton made his discoveries, and then there are brief notes concerning the manuscripts on alchemy and on historical and theological subjects, plus an appendix giving a sample of the riches of the collection.⁹² While studying the collection, Adams and Luard made careful long-hand transcripts of many letters and documents which were intended to be returned to the Earl of Portsmouth.⁹³

It might be supposed that the availability to scholars of this rich treasure of historical materials, the nature of which was made evident by the published catalogue, would have attracted a certain amount of scholarly attention. But for about half a century this great collection remained virtually unused in the University Library at Cambridge. We may agree with Whiteside that "inexplicably its contemporary impact was almost nil."⁹⁴ Perhaps the reason is that "no member of the cataloguing syndicate implemented the official report with an enlightening secondary study, historical or biographical, of any of the documents he had pondered over so long."

The literature of the history of science shows that during this period of a half-century, only one major use was made of the collection, by the historian of mathematics Walter William Rouse Ball. He published the results of a careful examination of Newton's unpublished manuscript (in the Portsmouth Collection) on the classification of cubic curves (1891) and also a brief but important critique of a manuscript of Newton on central forces (1892). He also published, from the manuscripts, an essay of Newton's on the role of mathematics in university education.⁹⁵ Additionally, he drew on the Newtonian manuscript corpus in preparing his important essay on the "genesis of the Principia."⁹⁶ Here, among other things, Rouse Ball included the text of Newton's tract De motu, which—as I have mentioned—had been published some 50 years earlier by Rigaud, from the version in the Royal Society.

Whiteside found only two other serious users of the Portsmouth Collection prior to the 1930's.⁹⁷ Duncan C. Fraser published and analyzed some of Newton's papers on interpolation,⁹⁸ and a German scholar, Alexander Witting, "studied the fluxional manuscripts in Cambridge and prepared a preliminary report."⁹⁹ The latter undertook this work a few years before the 1914 war and, when the war was over, never returned to it.

In the 30's, Louis Trenchard More examined the papers in the Portsmouth Collection in the University Library and also had access to the papers still in the possession of the family. In the preface to his biography (1934), he expressed his gratitude "to Blanche, Lady Portsmouth, and to her nephew, Viscount Lymington, who, although I was then a stranger to them, sent their priceless collection in Hurstbourne Park to the British Museum in order that I might examine and use it at my leisure." Although More quoted some extracts from Newton's MS documents and notebooks, he apparently did not bother much with the large body of material assembled by Newton relating to alchemy. In his discussion of this subject, in fact, the only extracts he quoted are a letter from Newton to Oldenburg about Boyle's experiments (previously published in the works of Boyle and in Rigaud's two volumes of selections from the Macclesfield Collection) and a little over a page extracted from the published Query 31 of the Opticks. But More did state, unequivocally, "The fact of the matter is, Newton was an alchemist, and his major interest in chemistry, in his earlier years, centred in the possibility of transmuting metals." And he added that there was "a mystical strain" in Newton's "character which had been quite overlooked. It showed itself not only in his persistent reading of the esoteric formulae of the alchemists, but also in his sympathy for the philosophy of the Cambridge Platonists and in his extended interpretations of the prophecies of the Books of Daniel and of the Revelation."¹⁰⁰ More argued that "there can be no doubt that [Newton] not only seriously sought the transmutation of metals into gold and the universal panacea for disease and old age, but also believed them to be the chief goal of the chemist."¹⁰¹ But More gave no idea of the vast extent of Newton's alchemical manuscripts, including his lengthy transcripts of writings on this subject, his attempt to catalogue the authors and to find out which were the best, and his efforts to find identities in language and expression among the many writers on the subject.

In a lengthy footnote occupying half a page, More¹⁰² attacked the statement of Brewster that Newton's alchemy, as well as Boyle's and Locke's, was not of the kind "commencing in fraud and terminating in mysticism." And he indicated that Brewster had erred in stating that it had been "a love of truth alone" and "a wish to test the extraordinary pretensions of their predecessors and their contemporaries" that had provided "the only motives by which [Boyle, Newton, and Locke] were actuated."

More, however, did better with Newton's theology. In fact, More stated expressly:

What we can learn from the published theological works of Newton is obscured by his caution, a caution which must have been increased by the misfortunes of Whiston. When I was generously given permission to examine, and to make extracts from, the Portsmouth Collection I was particularly anxious to see whether the vexed question of his religious opinions could not be answered from the documents which Horsley and Brewster did not feel it wise to publish. And I think the answer can now be given.¹⁰³

More concluded that Newton "was wholly committed, as was Milton, to the Protestant doctrine against the authority of the Church Councils." And he emphasized the fact that "personally, Newton was an Arian since he states definitely that the Father and the Son are not one substance; that the Son was created and therefore of a different substance for, if they were of one substance then, the Father having created the substance of the Son, He must have created His own substance."¹⁰⁴ According to More, "Newton goes much farther than merely to deny the doctrine of consubstantiation. He had rationally adopted the Unitarian position that Jesus was sent by the Father into the world as a Prophet who differed from the other Prophets only in the immediacy of the message delivered to him." Yet, "like so may other Unitarians of the day, such as Locke, he … makes a break between reason and practice, since he maintained his affiliation with the Church of England."¹⁰⁵ Clearly, save for an aspect of Newton's theological beliefs, More's biography did not substantially change our view of Newton. The third revelation had not yet occurred by the 1930's, despite a half-century of availability of the Portsmouth Collection.^105a

The Third Revelation

The first date in the third revelation is 1936. In that year, in order to pay the death duties, the family turned over the remaining mass of Newtonian manuscripts, annotated books, correspondence, notebooks, and personal memorabilia, including portraits and busts (but not the major portraits in oil) for public auction at Sotheby's. There were in the material put up for auction some three million words in Newton's autograph, according to the estimate of the cataloguer, and—shocking as it seems to us today—the total realized by this sale was a mere £9030-lOs-Od, less than $30,000. The late A.N.L. Munby remarked that the sale did have at least one beneficial effect: the sale catalogue assembled by John Taylor.¹⁰⁶ This catalogue is a learned document, giving extensive extracts from many of the most important documents, and reproducing pages from a number of the major texts in facsimile. Here, for example, was startling and dramatic proof of the extent of Newton's involvement in alchemy.

As a result of the sale, Newton's manuscripts were literally scattered to the four comers of the earth and some have—one hopes only temporarily—disappeared from sight altogether. Thanks to the foresight of Lord Keynes (the economist John Maynard Keynes),¹⁰⁷ a large number of Newton's major alchemical manuscripts and the materials assembled by John Conduitt for preparing a biography of Newton were put together in a single collection and returned to the University of Cambridge, permanently this time, in King's College Library. Also, thanks to the activities of a variety of interested parties, some of these important documents ended up in Trinity, which had already been given a major part of the books from Newton's personal library, some of them annotated in Newton's hand and others dog-eared—as was Newton's fashion—so that the comer of the page would point toward a place of interest.¹⁰⁸

One of the effects of this sale was to call attention to the extent of Newton's still unpublished papers, but it must be confessed that there was not an immediate flurry of Newton scholarship. The reason is that many of Newton's papers had been purchased by dealers in books and manuscripts and were not available for study. Only gradually did they become concentrated in a few private collections and find their way into libraries where they could be studied. No doubt, interest in Newton and in his manuscripts would have been stimulated by the tercentenary of his birth (1942), but even that could not be properly celebrated until after the war.¹⁰⁹

As everyone knows, since the 1950's, Newton scholarship has grown into what has become called a "Newton industry," although there has been no concerted effort to produce a standard and uniform edition of Newton's writings like the editions of Galileo, of Huygens, and (in progress) of Kepler. The Royal Society did undertake to produce an edition of Newton's correspondence, now complete in seven volumes, begun under the editorship of H. W. Turnbull, continued by J. F. Scott, and completed by A. Rupert Hall and Laura Tilling. Not only does this edition include letters written by Newton and received by him, but there is also a generous selection of manuscript documents relating to scientific and other questions by Newton and—in particular—by David Gregory, who made many memoranda after visiting Newton and seeing his manuscripts and work in progress. The most notable work of editing in Newtonian scholarship has been the magisterial Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, produced under the able editorship of D.T. Whiteside of Cambridge University, just completed in eight tremendous volumes. Here are assembled, ordered, and classified all of Newton's writings on—or related to—mathematics, together with historical, analytical, and interpretive commentaries and introductions that by themselves constitute one of the major contributions to the history of mathematics, the history of 17th-century science, and our understanding of Newton's development, Alexandre Koyré, Anne Whitman, and I assembled an edition of Newton's Principles that was based on a collation of the printer's MS, the three printed editions (1687, 1713, 1726), and two examples of the second and of the first editions containing Newton's MS revisions. This work is currently being supplemented by a new English version of Newton's Principles and of the Essay on the System of the Universe.¹¹⁰ Two major jobs of editing Newton's writings are Henry Guerlac's forthcoming edition of the Opticks and Alan Shapiro's edition of the Optical Lectures. In 1962, A. Rupert and Marie Boas Hall brought out a major collection of Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, followed in 1965 by John Herivel's The Background to Newton's "Principia," a substantial part of which was an edited anthology of MS writings of Isaac Newton. Newton's published Papers & Letters on Natural Philosophy were edited for publication in 1958 (second edition, 1978) by I. B. Cohen, assisted by R. E. Schofield. A large company of scholars have studied, edited, or published important manuscript material in books and articles. They include A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, John W. Herivel, Frank Manuel, Henry Guerlac, J. E. McGuire, P.M. Rattansi, Alexandre Koyré, R. S. Westfall, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Karin Figala, I. B. Cohen, Alan Shapiro, J. P. Lohne, and others. The effect of their writings cumulatively is to produce the third revelation of Newton.^110a

The esoteric side of this thrice-revealed Newton was heralded in a famous lecture written by Lord Keynes and read by his brother, Sir Geoffrey, at the Newton Tercentenary Meetings at the Royal Society. A somewhat startled audience heard that Keynes—who had studied deeply the manuscripts that he had collected after the sale of the Portsmouth Papers—no longer believed in the traditional image of Newton but held that there was an altogether different Newton revealed by his secret papers. This now thrice-revealed Newton was described by Keynes as follows:

In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason.

I do not see him in this light. I do not think that any one who has pored over the contents of that box which he packed up when he finally left Cambridge in 1696 and which, though partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonder-child to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.

Then Keynes went on to say:

Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements (and that is what gives the false suggestion of his being an experimental natural philosopher), but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty—just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibnitz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.¹¹¹

This was strong medicine and hard to take, for Keynes was suggesting that Newton was to be understood through alchemy, mystic philosophy, and the Hermetic tradition and not through mathematics, physics, and astronomy, as had been customary for three centuries.

Keynes's paper was written for a private group in Trinity College, and there was no way of telling whether or not he might have rewritten it for a public lecture to an international company of scientists at the Royal Society's celebrations of the tercentenary of Newton's birth. He died before the celebrations, and the original text—unrevised—was read by his brother in 1946 and published as part of the proceedings in 1947. One year later, in 1948, A. Rupert Hall published what may now be considered a landmark article on "Sir Isaac Newton's Note-Book," the first scholarly article of the third revelation to be based on the manuscripts.¹¹²

As far as I can tell, the next work to use Newton's unpublished MSS was the edition of Newton's Theological Manuscripts in 1950 by Herbert McLachlan, who drew upon the riches of the Keynes Collection. In that same year, there was published A Descriptive Catalogue of the Grace K. Babson Collection of the Works of Isaac Newton, with an account of the great manuscripts acquired from the Portsmouth sale. Here were full descriptions of alchemical MSS, Newton's treatise in MS on Solomon's Temple, notes on the Athanasian creed, and other theological documents. But there was no further new revelation from the MSS until Hall's second paper, in 1955, on "Further Optical Experiments of Newton." My own Franklin and Newton of 1956 did not draw on MSS at all, since its aim was to trace the public tradition of Newtonian science during the 18th century.¹¹³ In 1953, however, Professor Turnbull revealed some aspects of Newton's calculations of lunar gravity of 1665-66, but he did so not in a scholarly journal but in the Manchester Guardian.¹¹⁴

I find that the next use of MSS, in 1957, was again by Rupert Hall, on Newton's early calculation of central forces. And in the following year, 1958, there was the first of a series of papers by A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, drawing on Newton's MSS—this one on Newton's chemical experiments. It was in this same year that I brought out my edition of Newton's published Papers & Letters on Natural Philosophy.

In 1959, the first volume of the long-awaited edition of Newton's correspondence heralded a new wealth of available source materials for understanding the life and thought of Isaac Newton, and in 1962, A.R. Hall and Marie Boas Hall continued the pioneer work of the third revelation of Newton with their volume of Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton. The Halls listed the major scholars known to them who had used or quoted from Newton's manuscripts. Among the names in their list were D. Geoghegan, who in 1957 had published a few extracts from "the alchemical papers in King's College;" F. Sherwood Taylor, who in that same year printed "a composite of quotations from alchemical authors put together by Newton;" and Sir John Craig, who had used "the papers sold in 1936, though printing none in extenso."¹¹⁵ The Halls also referred to David Eugene Smith, who in 1927 had published two documents; Alexandre Koyré, who in 1961 had published the MS texts of Newton's "Rules"; J. W. Herivel, who in 1960 and 1961 had published his first extracts from Newton's early studies of dynamics; and R. S. Westfall, who in 1958 had discussed "Newton's theology with some reference to the King's College papers." It was not a very impressive list, and it gave no hint of the "Newton industry" just coming into being.

I shall not attempt to summarize the contents of the Halls' seminal volume. But there are at least four extraordinary revelations about Newton in it. One is an essay which the Halls entitled "De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum," a general discussion of the principles of physics based upon young Newton's reading in Descartes' Principles of Philosophy and published scientific correspondence. Here was an indication of the profound influence of Descartes' science and philosophy upon Newton. Another was the revelation of Newton's intended but incomplete" Conclusio" written for his Principles, in which Newton expressed his aim of producing a science of particulate matter equivalent to his science of gross bodies. A third was the analysis of the stages of composition of the "General Scholium" with its mysterious reference to "subtle spirit," which turned out to be Hauksbee's electrical effluvia. Finally, the Halls showed how Newton was tending toward a philosophy of nature in which he added the concept of particulate forces (attraction and repulsion) to the received categories or principles of the "mechanical philosophy"—matter and motion.

What Has Been Revealed

I shall not attempt here to make a complete review of all of the new revelations brought about by the study of the manuscripts. To do so would be tantamount to making a critical inventory of the whole corpus of Newton scholarship during the last 20 years or so. But I shall indicate some of the highlights of the scholarly work that constitutes the third and final revelation.¹¹⁶ To me, one of the most interesting parts of the revelation has been the demonstration of the true importance of Descartes in the development of Newton's scientific and mathematical thought. It is generally known that in his Principles Newton refers to Descartes only indirectly, in a proof at the end of Book Two that the system of vortices is inconsistent with the astronomical phenomena, namely, Kepler's laws of planetary motion.¹¹⁷ Mathematicians and historians, going back at least to Clairaut and Lagrange,¹¹⁸ have even suggested that the whole purpose of Book Two was to demolish the Cartesian theory of vortices. Not only was Newton's dynamical astronomy thus supposed to be a frontal attack on the Cartesian scientific system, but this was the case also in mathematics. Newton's relation to Descartes was charaterized by the remarks quoted by Brewster that Newton's copy of Descartes' Geometry bore the comments in Newton's hand, again and again, "Error" or "non est Geom."¹¹⁹ Accordingly, it came as a considerable surprise—as first shown, with full documentary detail, by Rupert and Marie Hall¹²⁰ that Newton had made a careful study of Descartes' writings and that many of his own scientific ideas—for instance, those about dynamics and inertia—were developed as he contemplated the writings of Descartes. The relation between Descartes' physical concepts and Newton's was clarified by the writings of Alexandre Koyré, who traced the relationship between Newton's definition and statement of the law of inertia and Descartes' statement,¹²' a study which I myself helped to complete by showing the steps of transmission and transformation by which Newton attained his own first law of motion from Descartes' law of nature.¹²² It even turns out that the title of Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" is only a transformation of Descartes' title "Principles of Philosophy." The very phrase used by Newton, "Axiomata, sive Leges Motus,"¹²³ was a transformation of what he found in Descartes' Principles, "Regulae quaedem sive leges naturae."¹²⁴ Not only did Newton write in terms of the new idea of a "state" of motion (which, as Koyré showed, was obtained directly from Descartes),¹²⁵ but I found that even such a phrase as "quantum in se est" which Newton used for inertia was taken directly from Descartes in this context; it came originally from Lucretius. Thus I found a dramatic illustration of how Newton's concepts were born by transformation of Descartes' ideas.¹²⁶ At the same time, Whiteside showed in the first volume of his monumental edition of The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton that Newton's fundamental ideas of the calculus were first forged and developed in his study of Descartes' Geometry, in a Latin edition by Schooten with tracts by other mathematicians. Thus there could no longer be any doubt whatever of the supreme importance of Descartes for Newton's dynamics and eventually celestial mechanics, as well as his invention of the calculus. And, as it finally turned out, the volume of Descartes' Geometry in which Newton had written "Error, Error" did not contain this word as a characterization of Cartesian mathematics as a whole, but indicated where Descartes had made errors; and "non est Geom." appeared in certain places where Newton indicated that the discussion by Descartes was not from a narrow and strict point of view to be considered "geometry."¹²⁷

Another aspect of Newton's thought revealed by the manuscripts has been studied primarily by Henry Guerlac,¹²⁸ who has traced the vagaries or variations in Newton's concept of the aether and the degree of his adherence to a belief in the aether. Thus, while Newton early believed in an aether that had a kind of substance, he then went through a period in which he thought that the aether—if it existed at all—had to be so tenuous that it could not produce most of the effects that he wished to attribute to it. Then later on he became excited by the work of Hauksbee and adopted a different kind of aether or "aetherial medium" in the final queries of the Opticks.129 R. S. Westfall has traced the relations between Newton's changing views about the aether and his concept of force.¹³⁰ Meanwhile, J. E. McGuire, working alone and also with P. M. Rattansi, showed how Newton believed in a priscan wisdom and thus thought that the scientific knowledge attained by Newton himself had largely been known to ancient seers or sages in Greece or Asia Minor.¹³' Newton considered that many of the great advances in science in his day (including his own discovery of universal gravity) were to a large degree only rediscoveries of what had been known long before. McGuire has also used the manuscripts to show the development of Newton's ideas about transmutation and transformation of matter and has elucidated Newton's conception of "passive" and "active" forces in matter.¹³² This has been a very valuable part of our understanding of Newton's concept of force in general and of the properties of matter, which are of course basic to his physics. At the same time, Frank Manuel has made a very fundamental contribution to our understanding of Newton's historical studies, notably his chronologies, and the stages of development of his religious ideas.¹³³ He has also drawn heavily on the corpus of Newtonian MSS for his Portrait of Isaac Newton (1968). The Halls and R. S. Westfall have written about Newton's ideas concerning matter and force. In particular, Westfall has used the manuscripts of Newton not only to trace the development of Newton's idea of force, but to elucidate what he calls Newton's radical revision of the "mechanical philosophy" of Descartes to which he generally adhered, according to which all phenomena were to be explained by matter and motion.¹³⁴ Westfall sees Newton as having added to that received philosophy the concept of force.¹³⁵ Westfall has also studied the optical manuscripts of Newton, another aspect of tracing the development of Newton's ideas concerning the aether.¹³⁶ It should be added that J. A. Lohne and Alan Shapiro have also worked fruitfully with the optical manuscripts.¹³⁷ Among other interesting revelations here is the fact that Newton's great paper on the nature of light and colors (1672) turns out to be something of a "scenario," because the way in which he describes the events of his exploration of dispersion and his description of his own reaction to his observations of prismatic spectra cannot be squared with the evidence of his prior knowledge as provided by the manuscript notebooks.¹³⁸ It should be noted that Zev Bechler has made an interesting set of studies of Newton's attempts to formulate a mathematical model for optical theory, in a style somewhat like that adopted for dynamics and celestial mechanics in Newton's Principles.¹³⁹ Westfall has also made a thorough study of Newton's early theological manuscripts and has shown among other things that Newton's concern for theology arose when it became necessary for him to contemplate holy orders in order to keep his Trinity College Fellowship.

In this, Westfall has drawn heavily on the Yahuda manuscripts, now in the University of Jerusalem and acquired by A. S. Yahuda from the Portsmouth sale at Sotheby's.¹⁴⁰ This subject has also been explored in an illuminating manner by Frank Manuel in his volume on Newton's religion, based upon this same collection of Newtonian manuscripts in Jerusalem.¹⁴¹

One of the long-standing puzzles about Newton's scientific work was how he could have claimed to have used the law for centrifugal force (v²/r) in the 1660's in order to derive the inverse-square law of force for uniform circular motion.¹⁴² The problem was one of dates, since Huygens did not publish the law until 1673 in his Horologium oscillatorium. The MSS contain the answer, as J. W. Herivel discovered.¹⁴³ He found that Newton had come upon this law independently about a decade or so before the publication of Huygens's book. Newton's derivation and the form in which he presented the law differ greatly from what is found in Huygens's book (which contains no derivatives or proof, but only a bare statement of the law in words). Since Newton is apt to be not wholly trustworthy on questions of dates and discoveries, it is pleasant to be able to record that in this case the MSS show that he had discovered this law just as he said he had done.

There is one further aspect of this third revelation which I have reserved until last, because it is in many ways the most striking and the most controversial. I refer here to Newton and henneticism in general, and Newton's relation to alchemy in particular.

Today we look on Newton's alchemy in a way that is totally different from that of the 19th-century commentators on Newton, of whom Brewster is a striking example. Part of the third revelation concerning Newton has been the result of carefully reading his papers on alchemy and finding that during the most creative period of his life Newton was a serious student of alchemy, as in fact Brewster reluctantly had to admit. But we do not necessarily approach the subject today by considering it contemptible. After all, modern atomic and nuclear physics has shown that Newton was distressingly right when he said that Nature delights in transmutations.'¹⁴⁴ We have learned in our own century that transmutations of the elements are constantly going on naturally all around us as one atom dies and gives birth to another in all the radioactive elements and that these transformations have been going on since the beginning of matter.

In this area we are indebted to F. Sherwood Taylor and D. Geoghegan¹⁴⁵ for brave beginnings and to A. Rupert and Marie Boas Hall¹⁴⁶ for serious inquiries, carried on by Richard S. Westfall.¹⁴⁷ But of greatest consequence are two full-length works of major importance on Newton's alchemical manuscripts and their meaning by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs¹⁴⁸ and by Karin Figala. As a result of these studies, it is now, as the lawyers say, "open and notorious" that Newton was so deeply steeped in his alchemical studies and researches that—to use a kind of alchemical term—much of his scientific thinking must obviously have been "tinctured" with alchemical ideas, imagery, and theories.¹⁴⁹ For example, Newton's concept of the aether was clearly related to his alchemical thinking.¹⁵⁰ And there can be, it seems to me, no doubt whatsoever (a conclusion which is so obvious that it would seem almost supererogatory to say it, save that no one did say it until fairly recently) that Newton's extensive reflections on the "theory of matter," and especially on the composition of matter and the particulate forces in matter, must be closely related to and possibly even to some degree derived from the realm of alchemy.

And so the study and the editing of Newton's manuscripts show that Keynes was to a degree correct. There is revealed to us a man who, during the three decades of his residence in Cambridge, most of it as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, was devoting intense creative energies to studying the literature of alchemy—both esoteric and exoteric—and making alchemical experiments, working out the meaning of the prophetic books of the Bible (Daniel and Revelation), trying to find the wisdom of ancient sages and seers, solving (to his own satisfaction) problems of biblical and historical chronology, studying church history, and wrestling with problems of pure theology. Is this the same Newton who is revered as the founder of modern rational science? In the extreme it has been suggested that we have "perhaps mistaken the thrust of Newton's career," that whereas "to us, the Principia inevitably appears as [the] … climax [of that career], in Newton's perspective it may have seemed more like an interruption of his primary labor."¹⁵¹

Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, who has produced exemplary studies of the principles and practices of alchemy as revealed in Newton's MSS, comes to the general conclusion that it was "the wedding of the Hermetic tradition with the mechanical philosophy which produced modern science as its offspring." Part of the reason is that "Newton's concept of forces between particles derived initially from terrestrial phenomena, especially chemical ones," and that "it was the concept of gravitation, that fundamental tenet of Newton's law of universal gravitation, which was so derived." She would thus suggest that "the 'active Principles' of the Hermetic tradition" were "incorporated into the attractive force of gravity."¹⁵²

I believe we must be extremely careful about this third revelation, for there is a temptation to assume that because Newton had such deep interests in alchemy and prophecy and ancient wisdom he produced his positive science out of these elements. But I believe the documents do not support this position. Newton, it seems to me, was not unusual because of his concern with prophecy, alchemy, and ancient wisdom. Indeed, when we think of the similar interests of Boyle and Locke, we find that it would have been unusual if Newton had not been so concerned.¹⁵³ To me, it is not significant that the founder of our rational mathematics and physical science should have been so steeped in esoteric subjects, but that he could have under those conditions, or in spite of those conditions, produced his masterpiece of modern hard science and established or inaugurated the first clearly recognized revolution in modern physical science. But, as Frances Yates wisely remarked to me when I discussed this extraordinary aspect of Newton's career with her, "We must remember that Newton was a genius."^153a

The Documents of the Third Revelation

Let me now turn to the documents that have enabled us to make this third revelation. The mass of documentary materials that comprise the corpus of Newtonian MSS is staggering in its extent. A literal pack rat, he saved scraps of paper from his college days and his early notebooks as a student. There remain thousands of MS pages relating to optics, astronomy, mechanics, mathematics, chronology, theology, alchemy, and the Mint, and a huge stack devoted to the controversy with Leibniz on priority in the matter of the calculus. There are books from his library with extensive MS annotations. The result is that we can trace the development of Newton's ideas in agonizing detail in many domains of his intellectual interest. But there is one major exception. We do not have the working papers in which he made the rough drafts and notes for the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. There are contemporaneous stories about Newton having burned some of his papers, and perhaps these were among the ones thrown into the flames. We can trace the alterations—proposed and actual—to the Principles once it was cast in all but final form, but we do not know how he discovered and proved his theorems.¹⁵⁴ I myself am convinced that the path of Newton's intellectual invention proceeded more or less in the order and form in which he presented his results in the Principles. Newton, however, alleged that the theorems in large part had been "invented by [the method of] Analysis." But, as he said, "considering that the Ancients … admitted nothing into Geometry before it was demonstrated by Composition [or Synthesis], I composed what I invented by Analysis to make it more Geometrically authentic & fit for the publick."¹⁵⁵ This was part of Newton's campaign to make it appear that he had actually used the newly invented calculus in the first stages of the Principles and then rewritten his work "in words at length after the manner of the Ancients without Analytical calculations." Such was his answer to the charge raised by the Leibnizians: If the really had invented the fluxional calculus, how could he possibly have written the Principles without using fluxions? Could it be that he destroyed this particular set of papers so as to be able to defend an invented scenario of discovery without having material evidence at hand to disturb his conscience'?¹⁵⁶

When the first edition of the Principles was published in 1687, Newton prepared at least two special copies to record emendations for a future edition—one was interleaved and specially bound for this purpose. And he did the same for the second edition in preparation for an eventual third edition.¹⁵⁷ I know of no author at this time who made such specially annotated and interleaved copies of his works. And so when Alexandre Koyré, Anne Whitman, and I came to edit the Principles, we were able to collate the three printed versions, the printer's MS, an annotated and an interleaved first edition, and an annotated and an interleaved second edition—eight in all.

Some of the differences are minor, some of great significance. In the first edition, "The System of the Universe" (Book 3) opens with a set of hypotheses. In the second edition, some of them become phenomena.^157a While writing out the concluding General Scholium for the second edition (1713), with its famous slogan Hypotheses non fingo ("I frame [or feign] no hypotheses"), Newton said that whatever is neither a phenomenon nor deduced from phenomena is a hypothesis. This statement occurs plainly in the published version. Had he changed his mind? In any event, there are still three plainly labeled hypotheses in the final Principles, despite Hypotheses non fingo.^157b

Of the major changes in successive editions, attention may be called to the following. In Book One of the Principles, in the first edition, prop. 16 proves the falsity of the rule of planetary motions in which it is supposed that the orbital speed in an ellipse is inversely proportional to the planet's distance from the sun. This result is of more than ordinary interest, since Hooke had asserted in a letter to Newton (6 January 1680) that if the solar force varies inversely as the square of the distance, the speed will be "as Kepler Supposes Reciprocall to the Distance."¹⁵⁸ Hooke evidently was not aware that this speed law had been rejected by Kepler and is in fact inconsistent with an inverse-square law of force. Hooke cited this letter to bolster his claim that he had anticipated Newton in the matter of the inverse-square law of force, and Newton replied by sending on to Halley a new scholium for prop. 4, giving a youthful demonstration of the law of centrifugal/centripetal force for uniform circular motion, which leads by the simplest algebra to the inverse-square law. For the second edition of the Principles, Newton shifted to prop. 2 the corollaries originally following prop. I of Book One, and he inserted a new set of corollaries following prop. 1. The first of these contains the statement of the true law of speed (that it is proportional, not inversely to the distance from the sun to the planet's position, but to the perpendicular distance from the sun to the tangent drawn through that position). Newton's effective reply to Hooke was thus advanced from prop. 16 to the extremely prominent place of the first corollary to the first proposition in the first book of the Principles.¹⁵⁹

Another important change was to correct the proof of prop. 10 of Book Two. A significant error in the proof had been brought to Newton's attention by Nikolaus Bernoulli after the pages containing this proof had been printed off for the second edition. For the new proof it was thus necessary to reprint the whole sheet of signature "Hh" and the leaf containing pages 233-34, which is a cancel pasted onto the stub of the original leaf in every copy of the Principles with which I am familiar.¹⁶⁰ In the second edition, most of Section 7 of Book Two, on the resistance of fluids and on the motion of a fluid flowing out of a vessel, was completely recast.¹⁶¹ As mentioned above, there were significant alterations in the opening of Book Three, the original "Hypotheses" being converted largely into "Phaenomena" and "Regulae Philosophandi." And Newton also completely rewrote and expanded the scholium following prop. 35 of Book Three, in which he claimed to have derived the theory of the moon's motion entirely from mathematical considerations of the action of gravitational forces of the sun and the earth on the moon.¹⁶²

The title pages of each of Newton's major treatises offer puzzles to the prospective editor. For example, there exist two different forms of the title page of the Principles in the first edition (1687). One bears the name of the printer Joseph Streater and says: "Prostat apud plures Bibliopolas." The other (sometimes called "a reissue of the first edition") differs only in that the imprint declares: "Prostant Venales apud San. Smith ad insignia Principis Walliae in Coemiterio D. Pauli, aliosq; nonnullos Bibliopolas." It has been conjectured that the copies without "Sam. Smith" in the imprint may have been intended for sale abroad and those with "Sam. Smith" for home consumption.¹⁶³ What is perhaps of even greater interest is the fact that Samuel Pepys's name appears more prominently than Newton's. In Newton's annotated copy of the first edition, the name of the leanred diarist has been cancelled and the form of Newton's name has been revised and his rank and position (Sir Isaac Newton, President of the Royal Society) have been brought up to date—by Richard Bentley.^163a

The title page of the Opticks (1704) is even more puzzling, for it does not contain the name of the author. This was hardly an oversight, but rather intentional, since there exists at least one special copy ("of record"?) in which the lines of type of the title page have been slightly rearranged to accommodate the additional line, placed between two rules, "By ISAAC NEWTON."¹⁶⁴ We do not know why Newton did not want his name on the title page (the preface is signed "I. N."), but there are two possible reasons for this action. The first is that the Opticks is written in the vernacular. We may recall that Christiaan Huygens's Traité de la lumière (also written in the vernacular) was similarly published without the author's name on the title page, which bears only the initials, "Par C.H.D.Z." But there exist at least two copies in which—as with the one example of Newton's Opticks—the author's name is given in full: "Par Monsieur Christian Huygens, Seigneur de Zeelhem.^164a Newton's Opticks was written up in words, with quantitative results of experiments and some calculations, but not with proofs of propositions by mathematical methods (i.e., geometry, algebra or ratios, fluxions, infinite series, etc.) from first principles. The propositions tend to have a "Proof by Experiments." The reason is not that Newton did not want to develop physical optics mathematically in what I have called "the Newtonian style." Rather, his attempts to do so in terms of various proposed mathematico-physical models proved to be failures. In this sense, the form of the Opticks was a kind of confession of failure, suggesting it to be an imperfect work suitable only for publication in a vernacular language and presumably not fully worthy of bearing the author's name.^164b

At the height of the controversy with Leibniz, the Royal Society—at Leibniz's request—mounted an investigation. They appointed a so-called international committee which produced their famous report, the Commercium epistolicun, in which it is claimed that Newton was the sole and primary inventor of the calculus.¹⁶⁵ Leibniz was judged to have been a plagiarist. Looking at the composition of the committee, no one ever could have supposed it impartial. But what we now know from the study of Newton's MSS is that Newton actually drafted the report, for there exist a large number of drafts and versions of the report written out in his own hand.¹⁶⁶ We can watch Newton ask himself whether he would have the committee say, "We are satisfied that Mr. Newton invented the method of fluxions before 1669," or whether it might sound more convincing to say simply, "We find that he invented the method of fluxions before 1669." Perhaps it would be even better to put it, "We are satisfied that Mr. Newton was the first author of the method." He liked that, but decided it was not strong enough, so he added some evidence to back it tip and concluded, "… for which reason we reckon Mr. Newton the first inventor." When the anonymous Commercium was eventually published, there appeared a lengthy book review of it in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. It was long suspected that Newton must have helped write this review, but the MSS show dozens of versions of it in his own hand. He was the sole author. Finally, when the Commercium was reprinted in 1722 in a second edition, this review was added as an introduction, still anonymous, but translated into Latin. But now there was added a new anonymous preface commending the review and emphasizing its major points. Who wrote it? Isaac Newton—as is shown by the many MS versions of it in his own hand.^166a

Since I have mentioned the number of different versions of the same text in Newton's MSS, it is appropriate to call attention to one of the major problems in editing Newton's unpublished writings. Not only are there successive versions or drafts, but Newton had the maddening habit of making multiple copies of the same document, sometimes with only minor variations. He even copied out whole sections of books from his own library. I have referred (in section 2 supra) to Brewster's astonishment on finding that Newton had copied out texts (in part or in full) of alchemical treatises, some of them appearing twice in identical versions. A theological MS in the Keynes Collection called "Irenicum, or Ecclesiastical Polity Tending to Peace" exists in seven almost identical autograph drafts. Whiston recorded that Newton wrote out "eighteen copies of the first and principal chapter of the Chronology with his own hand but little different from one another." The small tract De motu corporum, preliminary to the Principles, exists (as I have mentioned earlier) in at least five (and possibly six) variant versions with different titles.¹⁶⁷ There are four separate commentaries on Daniel and the Apocalypse. The only saving grace for an editor is that Newton's handwriting is generally clear and easy to read. It has even been conjectured that Newton may have delighted in copying out extracts from printed works as well as his own compositions because he was overly enamored of his own handwriting. Here is yet another textual mystery.

There is no plan or program for producing a uniform series of all of Newton's writings. A somewhat similar format has been adopted by Cambridge University Press for the seven-volume set of Newton's Correspondence, the eight volumes of D. T. Whiteside's edition of The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, and the three volumes of our edition of Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica with variant readings. But the same publisher used a different format for the Halls' Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, and it is doubtful whether the grand style and format can withstand the pressures of inflation.

Whoever laments the lack of a great edition of all of Newton's writings should be aware of the paradox that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the existence of a great scholarly edition of a scientist's works and a body of significant scholarly writings concerning that figure. A notable example is Christiaan Huygens, one of the major mathematicians and scientists of the second half of the 17th century—easily the greatest scientist of his time but for Newton. In fact, Huygens is the only scientist of Newton's day to whom Newton applied the appellation summus. The edition of Huygens's writings is a tremendous monument to scholarship, unrivalled in the annals of science. Published by the Dutch Society of Sciences, the edition eventually filled 22 magnificent volumes, the first appearing in 1888 and the last in 1950. Words cannot convey the quality of this edition. The volumes are in a large quarto size, beautifully printed in large type. The paper is of an extravagant quality, handmade specially for this edition and watermarked "Christiaan Huygens." Each subject and each major paper is introduced by a historical essay, and there are extensive scholarly annotations. Furthermore, each volume has three long and complete indexes: one of books and articles mentioned in the text or in the notes and introductions, another of persons mentioned, and a third of subjects. It is an edition that puts to shame all others. And yet it must be reported that the last quarter century has produced very little in the way of scholarly articles on Huygens and his work. There are no major studies of importance on his contributions to astronomy (his telescopes, his resolution of Saturn's ring, his discovery of a satellite of Saturn), nor of his work in geometry and analysis (including his work on the cycloid), his discovery of the laws of impact, his great study of circular motion and his finding of the laws of "centrifugal" force, nor is there even an adequate critical and scholarly analysis of his discovery of the isochronism of the epicycloidal pendulum and the invention of the clock escapement. There is not even a true biography of Huygens worthy of the man and on a par with the great edition of his Oeuvres.

By contrast, the Newton industry—like the Darwin industry—goes on apace. One can scarcely keep up with all the books and articles in these fields. In both cases, radical new interpretations have been emerging—based on extensive use of the manuscripts. Yet in the case of both Newton and Darwin there is no real edition of their works, although an edition of Darwin's correspondence is in progress.

Will there be a fourth revelation of Isaac Newton, or have we reached the final stages of knowledge with the completion of the trinity'? I very much doubt that there will be a new revelation as far-reaching and as profound as the third has been. But in this regard historians would be wise to follow the advice given to young chemists by Harvard's Professor E. P. Kohler. A lecture-demonstration had ended in an explosion that destroyed the lecture table and the front of the lecture room, instead of merely producing the change in color and substance that he had announced to his class in organic chemistry. In these matters, he said, a chemist should be a historian and not a prophet.

Notes

¹ The original publications of Isaac Newton are listed in Babson (1950), Gray (1907), and Wallis (1977); the work by Wallis contains also references to the secondary literature. A good guide to the main scholarly works concerning Newton is to be found in Cohen (1974). The current literature is listed in the annual Critical Bibliography published in Isis, the official quarterly journal of the History of Science Society. The advance of Newton scholarship can be followed year by year during a half-century in Pighetti (1960).

² On the circulation and printing of this paper in Newton's day, see the introduction to the facsimile reprint of it in Newton (1958). An admirable discussion of the publication of Newton's writings is to be found in the introduction to the first volume of D.T. Whiteside's edition of Newton's Mathematical papers.

³ These appear at the beginning of the volume. See Cohen (1971). An edition of Newton's Principles, with variant readings, was published in 1972. A new English translation by Anne Whitman and the writer is currently being completed for publication.

⁴ The Opticks is available in a paperback reprint (1952). A scholarly edition of this work, with an analysis of the difference between the several editions, has been completed for publication by Henry Guerlac.

⁵ Of course, Newton's publications on chronology and the interpretation of the prophetic books of Scripture were available to all, and there were hints aplenty concerning Newton's interest in alchemy. A major text of Newton's, giving a clue to the fact that Newton's interests were not limited to mathematical physics and experiment, was published by Gregory in 1832.

⁶ Of course, during the 18th century the Cartesians and various other groups did not accept the Newtonian principles and so did not look upon Newton as the lawgiver. For representations of Newton in art, see the article by Haskell in Palter (1970); also Cohen (1979).

⁷ See Buchdahl (1961).

⁸ Malone (1948), 101.

⁹ See Westfall (1980), Manuel (1959, 1963, 1974).

¹⁰ See Dobbs (1975), Figala (1977, 1977a).

¹¹ See McGuire & Rattansi (1966).

¹² See Munby (1952b).

¹³ The fullest account of the history of Newton's manuscripts is to be found in D.T. Whiteside's introduction to the first volume of his edition of Newton's Mathematical papers.

¹⁴ E.g., Mach (1960), 236-7.

¹⁵ See Cohen (1971), ch 9, section 7.

¹⁶Ibid, 242.

¹⁷ See Koyré (1960); the changes in the queries are indicated in Horsley's edition (1779-85). See Guerlac's edition (referred to in note 4 supra).

¹⁸ Koyré & Cohen (1961, 1962); see in Priestley (1970).

¹⁹ This is discussed in Cohen (1969).

²⁰ In a letter to Bentley (10 Dec. 1692), Newton said: "When I wrote my treatise about our Systeme I had an eye upon such Principles as might work wth considering men for the beleife of a Deity & nothing can rejoyce me more then to find it usefull for that purpose." See Correspondence, 3, 233.

²¹ The translation "I feign" for "fingo" was suggested by Alexandre Koyré; see Cohen (1962). See query 31 in the second and later English editions.

²² The discussions of these questions occur in the second part of the last paragraph of the concluding query 31 in the second and later editions.

²³ This occurs in query 30: "Nature … seems delighted with Transmutations."

²⁴ See the edition of Newton's Principles (1972) with variant readings, p 87 (line 9), p 89 (lines 1, 3, 6, 7, 12, 16, 29), p 90 (line 32), p 402 (line 20).

²⁵ See Cohen (1966), Koyré (1965).

²⁶ This hypothesis was eliminated in the second edition.

²⁷ See Cohen (1966), and especially McGuire (1967).

²⁸ On the way in which it was used, see Cohen (1966). See also McMullin (1978).

²⁹ I have indicated, in Cohen (1966), that this was a hypothesis of the Aristotelians and Cartesians, rather than Newton's own belief.

³⁰ Cohen (1964).

³¹Ibid.

³² See Manuel (1963).

³³Ibid.

³⁴Ibid.

³⁵ See Westfall (1980).

³⁶ See Manuel (1974).

³⁷ A catalogue of Napier's works by W. R. MacDonald is given in the latter's English translation of Napier's Canon (1889).

³⁸ Manuel (1974), 99.

³⁹Ibid, 99-100. See Hill (1965).

⁴⁰ Cf, e.g., Hill (1965), 7.

⁴¹ Manuel (1974), 90-1.

⁴²Ibid, 92.

⁴³ For an account of Newton's method, see Manuel (1963, 1974).

⁴⁴ Manuel (1974), 93.

⁴⁵ Quoting from McLachlan (1950), 119.

⁴⁶ See Cohen (1960), 500-1.

⁴⁷ Newton (1733).

⁴⁸ Quoted from D.T. Whiteside (1967), introduction to Math. Papers, 1, xviii.

⁴⁹Ibid, xix.

⁵⁰Ibid, xix-xx.

⁵¹Ibid, xx, n 12.

⁵² Brewster (1855), 2, 342-6.

⁵³ McLachlan published only a selection, in which the texts were chosen to illustrate a particular point of view. It would be a great desideratum to bring out a rather fuller selection of Newton's theological writings, including texts from the Yahuda MSS now in Jerusalem.

⁵⁴ Manuel (1963); also see Manuel (1974).

⁵⁵Op cit, xx, n 15.

⁵⁶ These are now largely to be found in the Keynes MSS in the library of King's College in Cambridge.

⁵⁷ For an account of Conduitt's activities in relation to these Newtonian documents, see Whiteside, op cit.

⁵⁸ See DeMorgan (1885).

⁵⁹ Whiteside, op cit xxii-xxiii.

⁶⁰Ibid.

⁶¹ See the complete catalogue, Portsmouth Collection (1888).

⁶² Newton (1779-85).

⁶³ See Whiteside, op cit., xxvii.

⁶⁴ This tract was published by Rigaud (1838), app 1, 1-19, from the text in the Royal Society. Versions based on the MSS in the University Library, Cambridge, have been published in Ball (1893), 51-6; Hall & Hall (1962), 243-67; Herivel (1965), 257-74; and Whiteside (Math. Papers, 6, 30-80). On the background to the composition of De motu, see Cohen (1970), ch 3, 47-81 (esp. 54-62); on its significance, see Cohen (1980), ch 5 (esp. sections 5.5, 5.6).

⁶⁵ There are two states of the first edition, one having Edinburgh and London on the title page, the other Edinburgh and Boston, both 1855; the second edition (1860) has only Edinburgh. A facsimile reprint (1965) of the first edition includes an introduction by R. S. Westfall.

⁶⁶ More (1934), vi.

⁶⁷ Introduction (1967) to Math. Papers, 1, xxix.

⁶⁸ Brewster (1855), 1, vii-viii, x.

⁶⁹Ibid, x.

⁷⁰ See Stukeley (1936), passim.

⁷¹Ibid, 20; see Cohen (1946).

⁷² See McKie & DeBeer (1952).

⁷³ Actually, Stukeley's example can serve as a "cautionary tale" to all practicing historians of science. In fact, it was on contemplating Stukeley's example that I began a program of oral history in relation to certain crucial developments in the history of contemporary physics and in the rise of the computer.

⁷⁴ Brewster (1855), 2, 371-6.

⁷⁵Ibid, 372.

⁷⁶Ibid.

⁷⁷Ibid, 372-3.

⁷⁸Ibid, 374.

⁷⁹Ibid.

⁸⁰Ibid, 374-6.

⁸¹Ibid, 371-2.

⁸²Ibid, 372, n 1.

⁸³ See note 65 supra.

⁸⁴ These occur primarily in vol 2, ch 24; also in appendixes 29-30.

⁸⁵ Letter from Lord Portsmouth to the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, 23 July 1872; quoted in Whiteside's "General Introduction" to vol 1 of his edition of Newton's Math. Papers, p xxxi.

⁸⁶ From a note by Lord Portsmouth, 2 Aug. 1872 (ULC MS Add 2588, ff 494-5), quoted by Whiteside, op cit, xxxi.

⁸⁷Ibid, f 496

^87aIbid; also, preface to Portsmouth Collection (1888), ix.

⁸⁸ Portsmouth Collection (1888).

⁸⁹ The collection is not officially known as "The Portsmouth Collection," and it is catalogued as a series of separate or individual entries, one for each group of manuscripts or each book. Since the catalogue (1888) is officially entitled A catalogue of the Portsmouth Collection of small books and papers …, the portion given to the University Library is generally (but only informally) known as the Portsmouth Collection.

⁹⁰ Portsmouth Collection (1888), ix-x.

⁹¹ The catalogue as printed would give the user no idea that the papers relating to the questions of priority in the invention of the calculus (ULC MS Add 3968) occupy some thousand manuscript pages. For a report on these, with critical comments and extracts, see vol 8 of D.T. Whiteside's edition of Newton's Math. Papers; also, Hall (1980).

⁹² The three appendixes deal with "The form of the Solid of Least Resistance" (see schol. to prop. 35 of book 2 of Newton's Principles), "A List of Propositions in the Lunar Theory intended to be inserted in a second edition of the Principia," and "The motion of the Apogee in an elliptic orbit of very small eccentricity, caused by given disturbing forces." Often reprinted and quoted is an autobiographical statement of Newton's about the stages of his discovery of his main ideas on celestial dynamics (p xviii); a complete version of this document, with critical comments, has been published in Cohen (1971), supp 1.

⁹³ These are largely collected together in ULC MS Add. 4007.

⁹⁴Op cit, xxxiii.

⁹⁵ This is reprinted, together with other essays, in Ball (1918).

⁹⁶ Ball (1893).

⁹⁷Op cit, xxxiv.

⁹⁸ Fraser's publications are listed in Wallis & Wallis (1977). See especially, Fraser (1927).

⁹⁹ Witting (1911-12); see Whiteside, op cit, xxxiv.

¹⁰⁰ More (1934), 158.

¹⁰¹Ibid, 159.

¹⁰²Ibid, 159, n 6.

¹⁰³Ibid, 641.

¹⁰⁴Ibid, 644.

¹⁰⁵Ibid.

^105a In the preface to his biography (p vi), More castigated Brewster for having adopted "the rôle of advocate to 'The High Priest of Science' as he calls Newton" and for portraying his hero "without blemish intellectually and morally." More noted that Brewster had said that "where he found evidence which confirmed facts known to reflect adversely on Newton's character, he published it; but if the facts were not previously known, he felt bound in honour to respect the privacy of his discovery." But in the end More himself admitted (p vii): "There is absolutely nothing in his life so serious that it should have been suppressed." I have always found this a curious statement, since it seems to imply that if there had been something "serious" in Newton's life, then "it should have been suppressed." And it is to be noted that although More thought that Brewster had gone to extremes in defending his hero, the critical reader today cannot help but observe how More did the same. More (p 333) found it necessary to attack "Professor Einstein's Generalised Theory of Relativity" for apparently daring to diminish the greatness or permanence of the system of dynamics of Newton's Principles. He would have Einstein's work be "merely a logical exercise of the active mind," which "ignores the world of brute facts." It "may be interesting, but it ultimately evaporates into a scholasticism. And if it persists, it will cause the decadence of science as surely as the mediaeval scholasticism preceded the decadence of religion." So much, then, for the popular belief that "modern criticism has at last broken down the classical mechanics."

Indeed, More felt the need of defending not only Newton against the onslaught of the physics of the 20th century, but also Aristotle. He said (p 332): "It is a notable fact that these two works [Newton's Principles and Aristotle's Organon], probably the two most stupendous creations of the scientific brain, are now under attack—the Organon by modern symbolists in logic, and the Principia by the relativists in physics." It was More's judgement that "Aristotle and Newton will be honoured and used when the modernists are long forgotten."

¹⁰⁶ Munby (1952); see Sotheby (1936).

¹⁰⁷ See Munby (1952).

¹⁰⁸ See Harrison (1978).

¹⁰⁹ See Royal Society (1947).

¹¹⁰ This new version, prepared by Anne Whitman and me, will be published by Harvard University Press and Cambridge University Press.

^110a Others, whose work is referred to below, who have contributed to this third revelation are Zev Bechler, Joan L. Hawes, and Peter Heimann. See also the important researches on Newton's prism experiments and telescope by A.A. Mills.

¹¹¹ Keynes's essay was published in Royal Society (1947) and has been since reprinted with other essays of his.

¹¹² Hall (1948).

¹¹³ Indeed, despite some obvious faults and its limitations, the presentation of Newton in this volume has a special value today, since it indicates the "public" or "semi-public" view of Newton available in the two centuries following Newton's death before our attention was riveted to some of the more startling aspects of Newton's private life, which have been brought to light by recent studies of his manuscripts.

¹¹⁴ Turnbull (1953).

¹¹⁵ See Craig (1946), Newton at the Mint. An interesting use of the Mint MSS has been made by Manuel in ch 11 of his Portrait (1968).

¹¹⁶ The limitations of space prevent my giving here even an approximation to what could be considered all of the major revelations brought about by the study of the Newtonian MSS. Accordingly, the examples that follow should not be considered as constituting in any sense a definitive set of what I consider to be the first-rate works of Newtonian scholarship of the last three decades or so. In other words, the omission of the name of any particular scholar should certainly not be taken to imply that I do not esteem his or her work as highly as those that I mention or discuss. In fact, some of the particular choices and omissions have resulted from an attempt to give an indication of the different kinds of scholarship, rather than to make a selection of the highest forms of scholarship to be recommended to any student of Newton. A rather complete bibliography of Newton scholarship, divided into convenient categories, is printed as part of my DSB article (1974). Two other bibliographies of major recent Newtonian scholarship, chiefly in relation to my own research, are to be found in my Introduction (1971) and my Newtonian revolution (1980). A volume currently in press, edited by Zev Bechler and being published by Reidel, containing articles by Whiteside, Westfall, Dobbs, myself, and others, will certainly serve as a good review of current Newtonian scholarship in a variety of fields (with bibliographical guides). Two earlier surveys of the state of Newtonian scholarship are Cohen (1960) and Whiteside (1962). See also the important collection of Newtonian studies edited by Robert Palter (1970).

¹¹⁷ The penultimate sentence of the final scholium of Book Two of Newton's Principles reads: "Therefore the hypothesis of vortices can in no way be reconciled with astronomical phenomena and serves less to clarify the celestial motions than to obscure them."

¹¹⁸ In the commentary to the French translation of Newton's Principles (1759), vol 2, second part, p 9, it is said: "This second Book, which contains a very profound theory of fluids and the motions of bodies in fluids, seems to have been intended to destroy the system of vortices, although it is only in the scholium to the last Proposition that M. Newton overtly attacks Descartes and shows that the celestial motions cannot be carried out by his vortices."

¹¹⁹ Brewster (1855), vol 1, 22, n 1, states: "Newton's copy of Descartes' Geometry I have seen among the family papers. It is marked in many places with his own hand, Error, Error, non est Geom." Since this volume did not appear among either the books given by Lord Portsmouth to the University Library, Cambridge, nor in the auction sale, it came to be believed that Brewster had been wholly in error and that no copy with these annotations existed. See, further, note 127 infra.

¹²⁰ This is the untitled essay which the Halls called "De gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum" and which they published in their 1962 volume (pp 89-156), with translation and commentary.

¹²¹ See especially the long essay on Newton and Descartes in Koyré (1965), which, together with its appendixes, makes up half of the volume.

¹²² Cohen (1964).

¹²³ See Cohen (1980), 186-7.

¹²⁴ For the texts of Descartes compared and contrasted to the texts of Newton, see Cohen (1980), 183-4.

¹²⁵ Koyré (1965), 66-70.

¹²⁶ Cohen (1964).

¹²⁷ The copy of Descartes' Géométrie in Latin in which Newton made his annotations was found a few years ago among some books that had at one time been destined to be discarded from the Trinity College Library.

¹²⁸ Guerlac has developed these ideas in a number of publications, some of which are published in Guerlac (1977a); his ideas have been revised and summarized in his biography of Hauksbee in the DSB.

¹²⁹ See note 128 supra; see also Koyré (1960). The final queries of the second (1717-18) English edition of the Opticks first appeared in the Latin Opticae (1706). The rise and fall of Newton's ideas concerning the aether and the experiments of Newton relating to this topic have been studied by R. S. Westfall and others, most recently in Cohen (1980) and in a long essay contributed to the volume (in press) being edited by Zev Bechler (see note 116 supra). Important studies of Newton's ideas of the aether, chiefly in relation to electricity, have been made by the Halls and by Joan L. Hawes. Zev Bechler has made a number of studies of Newton's optical ideas, based upon the manuscripts, and in particular has explored Newton's attempt to explain various optical phenomena by means of mathematical-physical models. Other important studies of Newton's optical experiments and ideas have been made by J. A. Lohne, who has in particular made an extensive study of the experimental conditions of Newton's prism experiments. Alan Shapiro has published several studies on aspects of Newton's work in optics and is currently preparing an edition of Newton's Lectiones opticae. Valuable insights into the topic of Newton's views of the aether have been provided by Peter Heimann.

¹³⁰ See Westfall (1971).

¹³¹ McGuire & Rattansi (1966).

¹³² McGuire (1967, 1968).

¹³³ See the various writings of Manuel listed in the bibliography.

¹³⁴ The mechanical philosophy associated with the name of Descartes gained wide adherence in the days of Newton. There can be no doubt that Newton was strongly influenced by the mechanical philosophy and sought indeed to explain all natural occurrences by means of matter and motion; when Newton disagreed with the Cartesian point of view, it was because he was a convinced atomist and thus believed in the existence of the vacuum or void space, which Descartes could not imagine to exist.

¹³⁵ Westfall (1971), 377: "The significance of the redirection of his philosophy of nature undertaken by Newton about 1679 can scarcely be overstated." Newton's addition of the concept of force to the traditional concepts of the Cartesian mechanical philosophy had been suggested earlier by the Halls (1962). For a somewhat contrasting view of Newton's philosophy and the possible redirection of it, see my Newtonian revolution (1980) and the essay in the volume edited by Bechler (cited in note 116 supra).

¹³⁶ See Westfall (1970).

¹³⁷ See Lohne (1961, 1965, 1967, 1968); also Lohne & Sticker (1969). Shapiro's edition of the Lectiones opticae has not yet appeared. He has recently given a general summary of his ideas concerning optical problems of Newton in an article in Isis (1980).

¹³⁸ This has been particularly brought out in Lohne (1965).

¹³⁹ See Bechler's articles in the bibliography.

¹⁴⁰ Westfall's ideas are most readily available in his recent biography (1980).

¹⁴¹ Manuel (1974).

¹⁴² Newton's early derivation is adumbrated in the last paragraph of the scholium to prop. 4, book 1, of his Principles. This paragraph was not part of the original MS, but was added while Halley was editing Newton's MS for publication. See the edition of Newton's Principles with variant readings (1972).

¹⁴³ Herivel (1960, 1965).

¹⁴⁴ In query 30 of the Opticks, Newton says: "The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations."

¹⁴⁵ See the bibliography. An excellent bibliographical essay for this area is to be found in Dobbs (1975).

¹⁴⁶ See, in particular, Boas & Hall (1958), M.B. Hall (1975).

¹⁴⁷ Westfall (1972, 1975).

¹⁴⁸ Dobbs (1975), Figala (1977, 1977a).

¹⁴⁹ See, for example, Whiteside's review of Dobbs (1975) in Isis (1977), vol 68, pp 116-21.

¹⁵⁰ On this subject, see Rattansi (1972); this whole area of the relation of Newton' s interests in alchemy to the development of his thought in mechanics is treated in my article, forthcoming in the volume edited by Bechler (see note 116 supra).

¹⁵¹ Westfall (1975), p 196.

¹⁵² Dobbs (1975), pp 211, 221.

¹⁵³ On this subject, see Hill (1965), p 7.

^153a Although studies of alchemy are important for opening up an examination of a major aspect of Newton's intellectual concerns, and although it is clear that alchemical questions are directly related to the nature of aether and Newton' s conceptions of matter, a Scottish verdict of "nonproven" must be given to the assertions now being made that Newton's hermetic or alchemical concerns and thinking led him to universal gravity. Here, it seems to me, a gross error is made in not distinguishing between an understanding of terrestrial gravity (or weight) and the concept of universal gravity or the force produced by universal gravitation. In one case, that of weight, all that is required is some kind of process that draws bodies toward the earth. For instance, Newton himself advanced explanations of this phenomenon in terms of a shower of aetherial particles and later on in terms of an aether of varying degrees of density. I see no reason why the kind of "forces" that are related to or involved in alchemical processes could not be a source of an explanation of this kind of weight—in which, be it noted, there is no need of specifying whether a body is pushed toward the earth, pulled toward the earth, or gets acted on so as to be moved toward the earth by a mutual interaction between it and the earth.

In the case of universal gravity, however, the situation is entirely different. Here it is necessary not only to have a process that impels an object (such as a rock, an apple, or the moon) toward the earth, but one that at the same time impels the earth toward the object (whether a rock or an apple or a moon). There is nothing that I am familiar with in Newton' s considerations of an alchemical kind that would have led to such a mutual interaction.

Furthermore, the steps that led Newton toward universal gravity were conditioned by considerations that began with the idea of a force directed toward a center where there was no body. This was related to the question proposed by Hooke to Newton in their correspondence in 1679-80, which set Newton going on the path that led him to universal gravity and finally to the Principles. This notion came to Newton not from considerations of alchemy, but rather directly from a question put to him by Robert Hooke. Newton's early solution was to begin by considering the orbital motion of a particle about an abstract center of force—a situation for which there is no analogue whatsoever in alchemy. It was only after Newton had developed such a system (not really a system, since there is only one body in it), that he recognized that in nature (as in the solar system) there is never a single body, but always a pair of bodies. For instance, the sun is at the center of the motion of the earth, the earth at the center of the motion of its moon; the sun is at the center of the motion of Jupiter, and Jupiter at the center of the motion of its moons. In any such system of two bodies, as Newton was quick to realize, the law of action and reaction (Newton's "third law") requires that the action be mutual, that if the sun is pulling on the earth, then the earth must be pulling on the sun with a force equal in magnitude but opposite in direction. And it is the same for the earth and its moon and even for the earth and an apple. Eventually, by a series of arguments of this kind, Newton was led to a principle of mutual interacting forces and to universal gravity—a process in which alchemical considerations are conspicuously absent. These topics are further developed in my Newtontian revolution (1980), my article on this topic in Scientific American (1981), and the article in the forthcoming volume edited by Bechler (cited in note 116 supra).

¹⁵⁴ For details, see my Introduction (1971, ch 3, section 7).

¹⁵⁵ Newton (1715), 206.

¹⁵⁶ For instance, Newton said specifically that by "the inverse Method of Fluxions I found in the year 1677 [should be 1679/80] the demonstration of Kepler's Astronomical Proposition viz. that the Planets move in Ellipses, which is the eleventh Proposition of the first book of the Principles." See my Introduction (1971), 80, 289-98.

¹⁵⁷ See Newton (1972), ix; see also my Introduction (1971). For further information concerning these volumes, see Harrison (1978).

^157a See Newton (1972), 550-63. "Hypothesis 1" and "Hypothesis 2" of the first edition became "Rule 1" and "Rule 2" in the second edition. "Hypothesis 3" of the first edition was omitted in the second edition, where a wholly new "Rule 3" was introduced. A "Rule 4" appears for the first time in the third edition.

"Hypothesis 4" of the first edition became "Hypothesis 1" in the second and third editions and was removed to a later part of Book 3.

"Hypothesis 5" became "Phenomenon 1" in the second edition, where a wholly new "Phenomenon 2" was introduced. "Hypothesis 6 … Hypothesis 9" became in the second edition "Phenomenon 3 … Phenomenon 6." For the significance of these changes, see Cohen (1966).

^157b One of the three "hypotheses" in the second and third editions of Newton's Principles was the original "Hypothesis 4," for which see n. 157a. Another, appearing also in Book 3 in the second and third editions (and there labeled "Hypothesis 2"), following prop. 38, was originally a "Lemma 4." Newton was unable to prove this lemma and so changed it to a hypothesis. According to Ball (1893), 110, "Laplace was the first writer to prove it." The third hypothesis in the second and third editions occurs at the beginning of section 9 of Book 2: "Hypothesis: The resistance which arises from the friction [lit., lack of lubricity, i.e., slipperiness] of the parts of a fluid is, other things being equal, proportional to the velocity with which the parts of the fluid are separated from one another." This hypothesis appeared identically in the first edition as well.

¹⁵⁸ Newton, Correspondence, vol 2, p 309. This letter was part of the epistolary exchanges between Hooke and Newton during 1679 and 1680, in the course of which Hooke taught Newton that the proper way to analyze orbital motion was in terms of two components: a linear inertial component along the tangent to the curve and an accelerated motion directed toward the sun or center of force. See further my Newtonian revolution (1980), ch 5, sections 4-5.

¹⁵⁹ See my Newtonian revolution (1980), 244-5; my Introduction (1971), 236-8; and Newton (1972). This alteration is summarized in Ball (1893), 100.

¹⁶⁰ See my Introduction (1971), ch 9, section 4.

¹⁶¹ See Newton (1972), vol 2, app 1.

¹⁶² On this topic see the introduction to Newton (1975).

¹⁶³ See Munby (1952).

^163a See my Introduction (1971), pi. 13.

¹⁶⁴ The copy with the author's name on the title page is in the library at the British Optical Society, London; see Sutcliffe (1932), where this title page is reproduced.

^164a One of these belonged to Prof E. N. da C. Andrade and is described in Sotheby (1965), where the title page is reproduced on p 65; for the other, see Horblit (1964), section 54, with reproduction (in colour) of both forms of the title page.

^164b This theme is developed in full in my Newtonian revolution (1980).

¹⁶⁵ The best edition is that of F. Lefort and J.-B. Biot, i.e., Collins (1856); see Hall (1980) and vol 8 of Whiteside's edition of Newton's Math. Papers.

¹⁶⁶ U.L.C. MS Add. 3968.

^166a See Hoskin (1961).

¹⁶⁷ In addition to the one in the Royal Society and the three in the University Library, Cambridge, there is presumably one in the Macclesfield collection.

Bibliography

Editor's note: Where the bibliography contains more than one publication by the same author in a given year, these are distinguished, for brevity in notes and in cross-references, by a lower case letter following the date. See, e.g., Guerlac (1963) & (1963a)

Aiton, E. J. (1962). "The celestial mechanics of Leibniz in the light of Newtonian criticism." Annals of Science, 18, 31-41;

——1964. "The celestial mechanics of Leibniz: a new interpretation." Annals of Science, 20, 111-23.

——1964a. "The inverse problem of central forces." Annals of Science, 20, 81-99.

——1965 [1966]. "An imaginary error in the celestial mechanics of Leibniz." Annals of Science, 21, 169-73.

——1969. "Kepler's second law of planetary motion." Isis, 60, 75-90.

——1972. The vortex theory of planteary motions. London: Macdonald; New York: American Elsevier.

——1975a. "The elliptical orbit and the area law." Vistas in Astronomy, 18, 573-83.

Andrade, E. N. Da C. 1935. "Newton's early notebook." Nature, 135, 360.

——1950. "Wilkins lecture, Robert Hooke." Proceedings of the Royal Society, 201 A, 439-73.

——1953b. "A Newton collection." Endeavour, 12. 68-75.

——See also Sotheby. 1965.

Axtell, James, L. 1965. "Locke, Newton, and the elements of natural philosophy." Paedagogica Europaea, 1, 235-44.

——1965a. "Locke's review of the Principia. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 20, 152-61.

Babson Collection. 1950. A descriptive catalogue of the Grace K. Babson collection of the works of Sir Isaac Newton, and the material relating to him in the Babson Institute Library, Babson Park, Mass. Intro. Roger Babson Webber. New York: Herbert Reichner. Supplement compiled by Henry P. Macomber, Babson Institute, 1955.

Ball, W. W. Rouse. 1891. "On Newton's classification of cubic curves." Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 22, 104-43.

——1892. "A Newtonian fragment relating to centripetal forces." Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 23, 226-31.

——1893. An essay on Newton's "Principia". London, New York: Macmillan. Photo-reprint, introd. I. B. Cohen. New York, London: Johnson, 1972.

——1893a. A short account of the history of mathematics. 2nd ed. London, New York: Macmillan. Contains an excellent chapter (16, pp 319-58), "The life and works of Newton."

——1918. Cambridge papers. London: Macmillan.

Bechler, Zev. 1978. "Newton's search for a mechanistic model of colour dispersion: a suggested interpretation." Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 11, 1-37.

——1974. "Newton's law of forces which are inversely as the mass: a suggested interpretation of his later efforts to normalise a mechanistic model of optical dispersion." Centaurus, 18, 184-222.

——1974a. "Newton's 1672 optical controversies: a study in the grammar of scientic dissent." In Elkana. ed. 1974. pp 115-42.

——1975. "'A less agreeable matter': the disagreeable case of Newton and achromatic refraction." British Journal for the History of Science, 8, 101-26.

Biot, J.-B., and F. Lefort. See Collins et al., 1856.

Boas, Marie. 1958. "Newton's chemical papers." In Newton, 1958, 241-8.

——See also Hall, Marie Boas.

Boas, Marie, and A. Rupert Hall. 1958. "Newton's chemical experiments." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 11, 113-52.

——See also Hall and Hall.

Brewster, Sir David. 1855. Memoirs of the life, writings, and discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable. Photoreprint, intro. Richard S. Westfall. New York, London: Johnston, 1965.

Brougham, Henry, Lord, and E. J. Routh. 1855. Analytical view of Sir Isaac Newton's "Principia". London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, [&] C. Knight; Edinburgh: A. and C. Black; Glasgow: R. Griffin. Reprinted New York, London: Johnson, 1972.

Brunet, Pierre. 1929. Maupertuis. [1] Etude biographique. [2] L'oeuvre et sa place dans la pensée scientifique et philosophique du XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Librairie Scientifique Albert Blanchard.

——1931. L 'introduction des théries de Newton en France au XVIIIe siècle. Vol. I, avant 1738. Paris: Librairie Scientifique Albert Blanchard.

Buchdahl, Gerd. 1961. The image of Newton and Locke in the age of reason. London, New York: Sheed and Ward.

——1973. "Explanation and gravity." In Teich and Young. 1973. pp 167-203.

Chandler, Philip P., II. 1975. Newton and Clairaut on the motion of the lunar apse. Diss. San Diego: University of California.

Cohen, I. Bernard. 1946. "Authenticity of scientific anecdotes." Nature, 157, 196-7.

——1956. Franklin and Newton: an inquiry into speculative Newtonian experimental science and Franklin's work in electricity as an example thereof. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Reprint Cambridge [Mass.]: Harvard University Press, 1966.

——1960. "Newton in the light of recent scholarship." Isis, 51, 489-514.

——1962. "The first English version of Newton's 'Hypotheses non fingo'." Isis, 53, 379-88.

——1963. "Pemberton's translation of Newton's Principia, with notes on Motte's translation." Isis, 54, 319-51.

——1964. "Isaac Newton, Hans Sloane, and the Académie Royale des Sciences." In Cohen and Taton, eds., 1964, pp 61-116.

——1964a. "'Quantum in se est': Newton's concept of inertia in relation to Descartes and Lucretius." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 19, 131-55.

——1966. "Hypotheses in Newton's philosophy." Physis, 8, 163-84.

——1967. "Dynamics: the key to the 'new science' of the seventeenth century." Acta Historiae Rerum Naturalium necnon Technicarum. Czechoslovak Studies in the History of Science. Prague, Special Issue 3, 79-114.

——1967a. "Galileo, Newton, and the divine order of the solar system." In Galileo, man of science. Edited by E. McMullin. New York, London: Basic Books, 1967, pp 207-31.

——1967b. "Newton's attribution of the first two laws of motion to Galileo." Atti del Symposium Internazionale di Storia, Metodologia, Logica e Filosofia della Scienza, "Galileo nella Storia e nella Filosofia della Scienza," xxv-xliv. Collection des Travaux de l'Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences, No. 16. Vinci (Florence): Gruppo Italiano di Storia della Scienza.

——1969. Introduction to Newton. 1969. pp vii-xxii.

——1969a. "Isaac Newton's Principia, the scriptures and the divine providence." In Essays in honor of Ernest Nagel. philosophy, science and method. Edited by Morgenbesser, Suppes, and White. New York, St. Martin's Press, pp 523-48.

——1969b. "The French translation of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1756, 1759, 1966)." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 72, 37-67.

——1969c. "Newton's System of the world: some textual and bibliographical notes." Physis, 11,152-66.

——1970. "Newton's second law and the concept of force in the Principia." In Palter, ed. 1970. pp 143-85. A considerably revised and corrected version of a preliminary text published in Texas Quarterly, 10, No. 3 (1967).

——1971. Introduction to Newton's "Principia". Cambridge [Mass.]; Harvard University Press; Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press.

——1972. "Newton and Keplerian inertia: an echo of Newton's controversy with Leibniz." In Debus, ed. 1972, 2, 199-211.

——1974. "Newton, Isaac." Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 10, 42-103. Rev. and enl. ed. forthcoming, New York: Scribner's.

——1974a. "Isaac Newton, the calculus of variations, and the design of ships: an example of pure mathematics in Newton's Principia, allegedly developed for the sake of practical applications." In R. S. Cohen et al., eds. 1974. pp 169-87.

——1974b. "Newton's theory vs. Kepler's theory and Galileo's theory: an example of a difference between a philosophical and a historical analysis of science." In Elkana, ed. 1974. pp 299-338.

——1975. Bibliographical and historical introduction, in Newton. 1975. pp 1-87.

——1979. "Notes on Newton in the art and architecture of the Enlightenment." Vistas in Astronomy, 22 (pt. 4), 523-37.

——1980. The Newtonian revolution, with illustrations of the transformation of scientific ideas. Cambridge [England]; London, New York, New Rochelle: Cambridge University Press.

——1981. "Newton's discovery of gravity." Scientific American, 244, No. 3 (March), 166-79.

Cohen, I. Bernard and Robert E. Schofield. See Newton. 1958.

Cohen, I. Bernard and René Taton, eds. 1964. Mélanges Alexandre Koyré. Vol. 1, L 'aventure de la science; Vol. 2, L'aventure de 1 'esprit. Paris: Hermann, Histoire de la Pensée, Nos. 12 and 13.

——See also Koyré and Cohen. 1960, 1961, 1962.

Cohen, R. S., J. J. Stachel, and M. W. Wartofsky, eds. 1974. For Dirk Struik. Scientific, historical amid political essays in honor of Dirk J. Struik. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 15, Dordrecht, Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

Collins, John, et al. 1856. Commerciumn epistolicum J. Collins et aliorum de analysi promota, etc., ou, Correspondance de J. Collins et d'autres savants célèbres du XVIIe siècle, relative à l'analyse supérieure, réimprimée sur l'édition originale de 1712 avec l'indication des variantes de l'édition de 1722, complétée par une collection de pièces justificatives et de documents, et publiée par J.-B. Biot et F. Lefort. Paris: Mallet-Bachelier.

Cotes, Roger. See Edleston, 1850.

Craig, Sir John. 1946. Newton at the Mint. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press.

De Beer, G. R. See McKie and De Beer. 1952.

De Morgan, Augustus. 1848. "On the additions made to the second edition of the Commercium epistolicum." Philosophical Magazine, 32, 446-56.

——1852. "On the authorship of the account of the Commercium epistolicum, published in the Philosophical Transactions." Philosophical Magazine, 3, 440-4.

——1885. Newton: his friend: and his niece. London: Elliot Stock.

——1914. Essays on the life and work of Newton. Edited, with notes and appendices, by Philip E. B. Jourdain. Chicago, London: Open Court Publishing Company.

De Villamil, R. 1931. Newton: the man. London: Gordon D. Knox.

Debus, Allen G., ed. 1972. Science, medicine and society: essays to honor Walter Pagel. 2 vols. New York: Science History Publications, Vol. 1 contains an appreciation of Pagel by Debus (pp 1-9); vol. 2 contains a bibliography of the writings of Pagel by Marianne Winder (pp 289-326).

Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. 1975. The foundations of Newton's alchemy, or "The hunting of the greene lyon ". Cambridge [England], London, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Domson, Charles Andrew. 1972. "Nicolas Fatio de Duillier and the prophets of London: an essay in the historical interaction of natural philosophy and millennial belief in the age of Newton." Diss. New Haven: Yale University.

Dreyer, J. L. E. 1924. "Address delivered by the President, Dr. J. L. E. Dreyer, on the desirability of publishing a new edition of Isaac Newton's collected works." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 84, 298-304.

Edleston, J. 1850. Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes, including letters of other eminent men, now first published from the originals in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge; together with an appendix, containing other unpublished letters and papers by Newton. London: John W. Parker; Cambridge [England]: John Deighton.

Elkana, Yehuda, ed. 1974. The interaction between science and philosophy. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.

Figala, Karin. 1977. Die "Kompositionshierarchie" der Materie—Newtons quantitative Theorie und Interpretation der qualitativen Alchemie. Munich: unpublished Habilitationsschrift in the Technische Universitat.

——1977a "Newton as alchemist." History of Science, 15, 102-37. Essay based on Dobbs. 1975.

Fraser, Duncan C. 1919. Newton's interpolation formulas. London: C. dE. Layton. Identical in content to Fraser's articles in The Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 51 (Oct. 1918), 77-106, (Apr. 1919), 211-32. Supplementary material from Newton's MSS was published in 58 (Mar. 1927), 53-95, and was then included in a reprint of the earlier work under the same title in 1927 (London: C. dE. Layton).

Gabbey, Alan [W. Allan]. 1971. "Force and inertia in seventeenth-century dynamics." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2, 1-67.

——1976. "Essay review of Newton. 1972." Historia Mathematica, 3, 237-43.

Geoghegan, D. 1957. "Some indications of Newton's attitude towards alchemy." Ambix, 6, 102-6.

Gray, George J. 1907. A bibliography of the works of Sir Isaac Newton, together with a list of books illustrating his works. 2d. ed. rev. and enl. Cambridge [England]: Bowes and Bowes.

Greenstreet, W. J., ed. 1927. Isaac Newton, 1642-1727. A memorial volume edited for the Mathematical Association. London: G. Bell and Sons.

Gregory, David. 1937. David Gregory, Isaac Newton and their circle, extracts from David Gregory's memoranda 1677-1708. Edited by W. G. Hiscock. Oxford: printed for the editor.

Gregory, James Craufurd. 1832. "Notice concerning an autograph manuscript by Sir Isaac Newton, containing some notes upon the third book of the Principia, and found among the papers of Dr David Gregory, formerly Savilian Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford." Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 12, 64-76.

Guerlac, Henry. 1963. "Francis Hauksbee: Experimentateur au profit de Newton." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 16, 113-28.

——1963a. Newton et Epicure. Paris: Palais de la Decouverte [Histoire des Sciences: D-91].

——1964. "Sir Isaac and the ingenious Mr. Hauksbee." In Cohen and Taton, eds. 1964. 1. 228-53.

——1967. "Newton's optical aether. His draft of a proposed addition to his Opticks." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 22, 45-57.

——1972. "Hales, Stephen." Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 6, 35-48.

——1972a. "Hauksbee, Francis." Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 6, 169-75.

——1973. "Newton and the method of analysis." In Dictionary of the history of ideas, 3. Edited by Philip P. Wiener. New York: Scribner's, 378-91.

——1977. "The Newtonianism of Dortous de Mairan." In Essays on the age of enlightenment in honor of Ira 0. Wade. Edited by Jean Macary, Geneva: Librairie Droz, 131-41.

——1977a. Essays and papers in the history of science. Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Contains most of Guerlac's early papers on Newton and the aether, on the Opticks, and on Hauksbee and Newton, but not (alas!) Guerlac (1972).

——1981. Newton on the continent. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Hall, A. Rupert. 1948. "Sir Isaac Newton's note-book, 1661-1665." Cambridge Historical Journal, 9, 239-50.

——1957. "Newton on the calculation of central forces." Annals of Science, 13, 62-71.

——1980. Philosophers at war: the quarrel between Newton and Leibniz. Cambridge [England], London, New York, New Rochelle: Cambridge University Press.

Hall, A. Rupert and Marie Boas Hall. 1959. "Newton's electric spirit: four oddities." Isis, 50, 473-76.

——1959a. "Newton's 'mechanical principles'." Journal of the History of Ideas, 20, 167-78.

——1960. "Newton's theory of matter." Isis, 51, 131-44.

——1961. "Clarke and Newton." Isis, 52, 583-5.

——eds. 1962. Unpublished scientific papers of Isaac Newton. A selection from the Portsmouth Collection in the University Library, Cambridge. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press.

Hall, Marie Boas. 1975. "Newton's voyage in the strange seas of alchemy." In Righini Bonelli and Shea, eds. 1975. 239-46.

——See also Boas, Marie.

Harrison, John. 1978. The library of Isaac Newton. Cambridge [England], London, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Hawes, Joan L. 1968. "Newton and the 'electrical attraction unexcited'." Annals of Science, 24, 121-30.

Heimann, Peter M. 1973. "'Nature is a perpetual worker': Newton's aether and 18th-century natural philosophy." Ambix, 20, 1-25.

Herivel, J. W. 1960. "Newton's discovery of the law of centrifugal force." Isis, 51, 546-53.

——1960a. "Suggested identification of the missing original of a celebrated communication of Newton's to the Royal Society." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 13, 71-8.

——1961. "Interpretation of an early Newton manuscript." Isis, 52, 410-16.

——1961a. "The originals of the two propositions discovered by Newton in December 1679?" Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 14, 23-33.

——1962. "Early Newtonian dynamical MSS." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 15, 149-50.

——1965. The background to Newton's "Principia." A Study of Newton's dynamical researches in the years 1664-84. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

——1965a. "Newton's first solution to the problem of Kepler motion." British Journal for the History of Science, 2, 350-4.

Hill, Christopher. 1965. Intellectual origins of the English revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Horblit, Harrison D. 1964. One hundred books famous in science. Based on an exhibition held at the Grolier Club. New York: Grolier Club.

Horsley, Samuel. See Newton. 1779-.

Hoskin, Michael. 1961. "The mind of Newton." The Listener, 66 (19 October), 597-9.

Huxley, G. L. 1959. "Two Newtonian studies, I—Newton's boyhood interests; II—Newton and Greek geometry." Harvard Library Bulletin, 13, 348-61.

Huygens, Christiaan. 1888-. Oeuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens. Publiées par la Société Hollandaise des Sciences. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Vol. 22: Supplément á la correspondance, varia, biographie de Chr. Huygens …, published in 1950.

Koyré, Alexandre. 1939. Etudes galiléennes. Paris: Hermann & Cie. Reprinted 1966.

——1950. "The significance of the Newtonian synthesis." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 3 [29], 291-311.

——1952. "An unpublished letter of Robert Hooke to Isaac Newton." Isis, 43, 312-37.

——1955. "Pour une edition critique des oeuvres de Newton." Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, 8, 19-37.

——1956. "L'hypothese et l'experience chez Newton." Bulletin de la Societe francais de Philosophie, 50, 59-79.

——1960. "Newton, Galileo, and Plato." Actes du IXe Congres International d'Histoire des Sciences, Barcelona-Madrid, 1959, 165-97. Reprinted in Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations, Vol. 6, 1041-59, and in Koyré. 1965. pp 201-20.

——1960a. "Les queries de l'Optique." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 13, 15-29.

——b. "Les Regulae philosophandi." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 13, 3-14.

——1965. Newtonian studies. Cambridge [Mass.]: Harvard University Press; London: Chapman & Hall. More than half the volume consists of a previously unpublished study, "Newton and Descartes," pp 53-200.

——1966. Etudes d'histoire de la pensee scientifique. Paris: Presses Universitaries de France.

Koyré, Alexandre and I. Bernard Cohen. 1960. "Newton's 'electric & elastic spirit'." Isis, 51, 337.

——1961. "The case of the missing tanquamn: Leibniz, Newton and Clarke." Isis, 52, 555-66.

——1962. "Newton & the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, with notes on Newton, Conti, and Des Maizeaux." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 15, 63-126.

Lagrange, Joseph Louis. 1788. Méchanique analytique. Paris: chez la veuve Desaint, Librairie.

——1797. Theorie des fonctions analytiques, contenant les principes du calcul differentiel, degages de toute consideration d'infiniment petits ou d'evanouissans, de limites ou de fluxions, et reduits a l'analyse algebrique des quantites finies. Paris: Impr. de la Republique [prairial an V].

Larmor, Joseph. 1924. "On editing Newton." Nature, 113, 744.

Lefort, F., and J.-B. Biot. See Collins et al. 1856.

Lohne, Johannes A. 1960. "Hooke versus Newton. An analysis of the documents in the case of free fall and planetary motion." Centaurus, 7, 6-52.

——1961. "Newton's 'proof of the sine law." Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 1, 389-405.

——1965. "Isaac Newton: the rise of a scientist 1661-1671." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 20, 125-39.

——1967. "The increasing corruption of Newton's diagrams." History of Science, 6, 69-89.

——1968. "Experimentum crucis." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 23, 169-99.

Lohne, Johannes A., and Bernhard Sticker. 1969. Newtons Theorie der Prismenfarben mit Ubersetzung und Erlauterung der Abhandlung von 1672. Munich: Werner Fritsch.

Mach, Ernst. 1926. The principles of physical optics, an historical and philosophical treatment. Trans. John S. Anderson and A. F. A. Young. London: Methuen. Reprinted New York: Dover, 1953.

——1960. The science of mechanics: a critical and historical account of its development. Trans. Thomas J. McCormack, new introduction by Karl Menger, 6th ed., with revisions through 9th German ed. La Salle, [Ill.]: Open Court Publishing Co.

Malone, Dumas. 1948. Jefferson the Virginian. Boston: Little, Brown.

Manuel, Frank E. 1959. The eighteenth century confronts the gods. Cambridge [Mass.]: Harvard University Press.

——1963. Isaac Newton, historian. Cambridge [Mass.]: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.

——1968. A portrait of Isaac Newton. Cambridge [Mass.]: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press.

——1974. The religion of Isaac Newton. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

McGuire, J. E. 1966. "Body and void and Newton's De mundi systemate: some new sources." Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 3, 206-48.

——1967. "Transmutation and immutability: Newton's doctrine of physical qualities." Ambix, 14, 69-95.

——1968. "The origin of Newton's doctrine of essential qualities." Centaurus, 12, 233-60.

McGuire, J. E. and P. M. Rattansi. 1966. "Newton and the 'pipes of Pan'." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21, 108-43.

——See also Westman and McGuire, 1977.

McKie, Douglas, and G. R. De Beer. 1952. "Newton's apple." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 9, 46-54, 333-5.

McLachlan, Herbert, ed. See Newton. 1950.

McMullin, Ernan. 1978. Newton on matter and activity. Notre Dame [Indiana], London: University of Notre Dame Press.

Miller, Perry. 1958. "Bentley and Newton." In Newton. 1958. pp 271-8.

Mills, A. A. 1981. "Newton's prisms and his experiments on the spectrum." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 36, 13-36.

Mills, A. A. and P. J. Turvey. 1979. "Newton's Telescope." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 33, 133-55.

More, L. T. 1934. Isaac Newton: a biography. New York, London: Scribner's. Reprinted. New York: Dover.

Motte, Andrew. See Newton. 1729. 1934.

Munby, A. N. L. 1951, 1952. "The two title-pages of the Principia." Times Literary Supplement, 50 (21 December), 2603; 51 (28 March), 228.

——1952a. "The distribution of the first edition of Newton's Principia." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 10, 28-39.

——1952b. "The Keynes Collection of the works of Sir Isaac Newton at King's College, Cambridge." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 10, 40-50.

Napier, John. 1889. The construction of the wonderful canon of logarithms. Translated from Latin into English, with notes and a catalogue of the various editions of Napier's works, by William Rae MacDonald. Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons.

Newton, Isaac. 1672. "A letter of Mr. Isaac Newton … containing his new theory about light and colors." Philosophical Transactions, 6, 3075-87.

——1702. A new and most accurate theory of the moon's motion; whereby all her irregularities may be solved, and her place truly calculated to two minutes. Written by the incomparable mathematician Mr. Isaac Newton, and published in Latin by Mr. David Gregory in his excellent astronomy. London: printed and sold by A. Baldwin. Reprinted in Newton. 1975.

——1715. "[Recensio Libri=] An account of the book entituled Commercium epistolicum Collinii & aliorumn, de analysi promnota, published by order of the Royal-Society, in relation to the dispute between Mr. Leibnits and Dr. Keill, about the right of invention of the new method of fluxions, by some call'd the differential method." Philosophical Transactions, 29, 173-224. The title of the book given in the Philosophical Transactions is not the exact title of the Commercium epistolicuin [first edition] itself. A French translation appeared in the Journal Littéraire, Nov./Dec. 1715, vol. 6, pp 13 ff, 345 ff.

——1728. A treatise of the system of the world. Translated into English. London: printed for F. Fayram.

——1728a. De mundi systemnate liber. London: impensis J. Tonson, J. Osborn, & T. Longman.

——1728b. Optical lectures read in the publick schools of the University of Cambridge, anno Domini, 1669. By the late Sir Isaac Newton, then Lucasian Professor of the Mathematicks. Never before printed. Translated into English out of the original Latin. London: printed for Francis Fayram.

——1729. The mathematical principles of natural philosophy. Translated into English by Andrew Motte. To which are added, The laws of the moon's motion, according to gravity. By John Machin. In two volumes. London: printed for Benjamin Motte. Facsimile reprint, intro. I. Bernard Cohen. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968.

——1733. Observations upon the prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John. London: printed by J. Darby and T. Browne.

——1759. Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle. Translated "par feue Madame la Marquise du Chastellet." 2 vols. Paris: chez Desaint & Saillant [& chez] Lambert.

——1779—. Opera quae exstant omnia. Commentariis illustrabat Samuel Horsley. 5 vols. London: John Nichols. Volume 5 was published in 1785. 5 vol. reprinted in 1964. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt. Friedrich Verlag (Günther-Holzboog).

——1931. Opticks or a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections & colours of light. Reprinted from the fourth edition [London, 1730]. Foreword by Prof. Albert Einstein, Nobel Laureate. Introduction by Prof. E. T. Whittaker, F. R. S. London: G. Bell & Sons.

——1934. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical principles of natural philosophy and his System of the world. Translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729. The translations revised, and supplied with an historical and explanatory appendix, by Florian Cajori. Berkeley: University of California Press.

——1950. Theological manuscripts. Edited by H. McLachlan. Liverpool: University Press.

——1952. Opticks or a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections & colours of light. Based on the fourth edition: London, 1730. With foreword by Albert Einstein; Introduction by Sir Edmund Whittaker; Preface by 1. Bernard Cohen; Analytical table of contents prepared by Duane H. D. Roller. New York: Dover Publications.

——1958. Isaac Newton's papers & letters on natural philosophy and related documents. Edited, with a general introduction, by I. Bernard Cohen assisted by Robert E. Schofield. Cambridge [Mass.] Harvard University Press. 2d ed., rev. and enl. Harvard University Press, 1978.

——1959-1977. The correspondence of Isaac Newton. Vol 1, 1661-1675 (1959), vol 2,1676-1687 (1960), vol 3, 1688-1694 (1961), Edited by H. W. Turnbull; vol 4, 1694-1709 (1967), Edited by J. F. Scott; vol 5, 1709-1713 (1975), vol 6, 1713-1718 (1976), vol 7, 1718-1727 (1977), Edited by A. Rupert Hall and Laura Tilling. Published for the Royal Society. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press.

——1964-1967. The mathematical works of Isaac Newton. Assembled with an introduction by Dr. Derek T. Whiteside. 2 vols. New York, London: Johnson Reprints [The Sources of Science].

——1967-. The mathematical papers of Isaac Newton. Vol 1, 1664-1666 (1967); vol 2, 1667-1670 (1968); vol 3, 1670-1673 (1969); vol 4, 1674-1684 (1971); vol 5, 1683-1684 (1972); vol 6, 1684-1691 (1974); vol 7, 1691-1695 (1976); Edited by D. T. Whiteside, with the assistance in publication of M. A. Hoskin and A. Prag. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. To be complete in 8 vols.

——1969. A treatise of the system of the world. Translated into English. With an introduction by I. B. Cohen. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall. Photo-reprint of the 2d ed. (1731), plus the front matter of the Ist ed. (1728).

——1972. Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. the third edition (1726) with variant readings assembled by Alexandre Koyré, I. Bernard Cohen, & Anne Whitman. 2 vols. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press; Cambridge [Mass.]: Harvard University Press.

——1973. The unpublished first version of Isaac Newton's Cambridge lectures on optics 1670-1672. A facsimile of the autograph, now Cambridge University Library MS. Add. 4002, with an introduction by D. Tide. Cambridge [England]: The University Library.

——1975. Isaac Newton's "Theory of the noon's motion" (1702). With a bibliographical and historical introduction by 1. Bernard Cohen. London: Dawson.

Palter, Robert. 1970. "Newton and the inductive method." In Palter, ed. 1970. pp 244-57.

——ed. 1970. The annus mirabilis of Sir Isaac Newton 1666-1966. Cambridge [Mass.], London: M.I.T. Press.

Patterson, Louise Diehl. 1949, 1950. "Hooke's gravitation theory and its influence on Newton. I: Hooke's gravitation theory. II: The insufficiency of the traditional estimate." Isis, 40, 327-41; 41, 32-45.

Pighetti, Clelia. 1960. "Cinquant'anni di studi newtoniani (1908-1959)." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, fascicoli 2-3, 181-203, 295-318.

Portsmouth Collection. 1888. A catalogue of the Portsmouth Collection of books and papers written by or belonging to Sir Isaac Newton, the scientific portion of which has been presented by the Earl of Portsmouth to the University of Cambridge. Prepared by H. R. Luard, G. G. Stokes, J. C. Adams, and G. D. Liveing. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press.

Priestley, F. E. L. 1970. "The Clarke-Leibniz controversy." In The methodological heritage of Newton. Edited by Robert E. Butts and John W. Davis. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp 34-56.

Rattansi, P. M. 1972. "Newton's alchemical studies." In Debus, ed. 1972. Vol. 2, pp 167-82.

——1973. "Some evaluations of reason in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century natural philosophy." In Teich and Young, eds. 1973. pp 148-66.

Rigaud, Stephen Peter. 1838. Historical essay on the first publication of Sir Isaac Newton's "Principia ". Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted, New York, London: Johnson 1972.

——ed. 1841. Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century … in the collection of… the Earl of Macclesfield. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Righini Bonelli, M. L. and William R. Shea, eds. 1975. Reason, experiment. and mysticismn in the scientific revolution. New York: Science History Publications.

Royal Society. 1947. Newton tercentenary celebrations. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press. Contains E. N. da C. Andrade, "Newton"; Lord Keynes, "Newton, the man"; J. Hadamard, "Newton and the infinitesimal calculus"; S. I. Vavilov, "Newton and the atomic theory"; N. Bohr, "Newton's principles and modern atomic mechanics"; H. W. Turnbull, "Newton: the algebraist and geometer"; W. Adams, "Newton's contributions to observational astronomy"; J. C. Hunsaker, "Newton and fluid mechanics."

Ruffner, James Alan. 1966. "The background and early development of Newton's theory of comets." Diss. Bloomington: Indiana University.

——1971. "The curved and the straight: cometary theory from Kepler to Hevelius." Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2, 178-95.

Sabra, A. I. 1967. Theories of light from Descartes to Newton. London: Oldbourne.

Sampson, R. A. 1924. "On editing Newton." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 84, 378-83.

Schofield, Robert E. 1958. "Halley and the Principia." In Newton. 1958. pp 397-404.

Scott, J. F. See Newton. 1959-1977.

Shapiro, Alan E. 1980. "The evolving structure of Newton's theory of white light and color." Isis, 71, 211-35.

Smith, David Eugene. 1927. "Two unpublished documents of Sir Isaac Newton." In Isaac Newton, 1942-1727. Edited by W. J. Greenstreet. London: G. Bell and Sons, pp 16-34.

Sotheby & Co. 1936. Catalogue of the Newton papers, sold by order of the Viscount Lymington to whom they have descended from Catherine Conduitt, Viscountess Lymington, great-niece of Sir Isaac Newton. London: Sotheby & Co.

——1965. Catalogue of the fine collection of scientific books, the property of Professor E. N. da C. Andrade, F.R.S. London: Sotheby & Co.

Stukeley, William. 1936. Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's life, 1752: being somne account of his family and chiefly of the junior part of his life. Edited by A. Hastings White. London: Taylor and Francis.

Sutcliffe, John H., comp. and ed. 1932. British Optical Association Library and Museum catalogue. London: Council of the British Optical Association.

Taylor, F. Sherwood. 1956. "An alchemical work of Sir Isaac Newton." Ambix, 5, 59-84.

Teich, Mikulas and Robert Young, eds. 1973. Changing perspectives in the history of science: essays in honour of Joseph Needham. London: Heinemann.

Turnbull, Herbert Western, ed. 1939. James Gregory. tercentenary memorial volume. Containing his correspondence with John Collins and his hitherto unpublished mathematical manuscripts, together with addresses and essays communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 4, 1938. Published for the Royal Society of Edinburgh. London: G. Bell and Sons.

——1951. "The discovery of the infinitesimal calculus." Nature, 167, 1048-50.

——1953. "Isaac Newton's letters: some discoveries." Manchester Guardian, 3 October, p 4. Reprinted, Manchester Guardian Weekly, 8 October, p 11.

——See also Newton. 1959-1977.

Turnor, Edmund. 1806. Collections for the history of the twon and soke of Grantham, containing authentic memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, now first published from the original MSS, in the possession of the Earl of Portsmouth. London: William Miller.

Waff, Craig. 1975. Universal gravitation and the motion of the moon's apogee: the establishment and reception of Newton's inverse square law, 1687-1749. Diss. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

——1967. "Isaac Newton, the motion of the lunar apogee, and the establishment of the inverse square law." Vistas in Astronomy, 20, 99-103.

Wallis, Peter and Ruth Wallis. 1977. Newton and Newtoniana, a bibliography. Folkestone [Kent, England]: Dawson.

Westfall, Richard S. 1962. "The foundations of Newton's philosophy of nature." British Journal for the History of Science, 1, 171-82.

——1963. "Newton's reply to Hooke and the theory of colors." Isis, 54, 82-96.

——1963a. "Short-writing and the state of Newton's conscience, 1662." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 18, 10-16.

——1967. "Uneasily fitful reflections on fits of easy transmission." Texas Quarterly, 10, No. 3 (Autumn), 86-102.

——1967a. "Hooke and the law of universal gravitation." The British Journal for the History of Science. 3, 245-61.

——1970. "Uneasily fitful reflections on fits of easy transmission." In Palter, ed. 1970. 88-104.

——1971. Force in Newton's physics: the science of dynamics in the seventeenth century. London: Macdonald; New York: American Elsevier.

——1972. "Newton and the hermetic tradition." In Debus, ed. 1972. 2, 183-98.

——1973. "Newton and the fudge factor." Science, 179, 751-8.

——1975. "The role of alchemy in Newton's career." In Righini Bonelli and Shea, eds. 1975. pp 189-232.

——1980. Never at rest, a biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge [England], London, New York, New Rochelle: Cambridge University Press.

Westman, Robert S., and J. E. McGuire. 1977. Hermeticism and the scientific revolution. Los Angeles: University of California, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

Whiteside, Derek T. 1961. "Newton's discovery of the general binomial theorem." Mathematical Gazette, 45, 175-80.

——1961a. "Patterns of mathematical thought in the later seventeenth century." Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 1, 179-388.

——1962. "The expanding world of Newtonian research." History of Science, 1, 16-29.

——1964. "Isaac Newton: birth of a mathematician." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 19, 53-62.

——1964a. "Newton's early thoughts on planetary motion: a fresh look." British Journal for the History of Science, 2, 117-37.

——1966. "Newtonian dynamics." History of Science, 5, 104-17. Review article on Herivel. 1965.

——1966a. "Newton's marvellous year: 1666 and all that." Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21, 32-41.

——1970. "Before the Principia: the maturing of Newton's thoughts on dynamical astronomy, 1664-84." Journal for the History of Astronomy, 1, 5-19.

——1970a. "The mathematical principles underlying Newton's Principia." Journal for the History of Astronomy, 1, 116-38.

——1976. "Newton's lunar theory: from high hope to disenchantment." Vistas in Astronomy, 19, 317-28.

——1977. "From his claw the greene lyon." Isis, 68, 116-21. Essay-review of Dobbs. 1975.

——See also Newton. 1964-1967, 1967-.

Wightman, W. P. D. 1953. "Gregory's 'Notae in Isaaci Newtoni Principia Philosophiae'." Nature, 172, 690.

Wilson, Curtis. 1970. "From Kepler's laws, so-called, to universal gravitation: empirical factors." Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 6, 89-170.

——1974. "Newton and some philosophers on Kepler's 'laws'." Journal of the History of Ideas, 35, 231-58.

Writting, Alexander. 1911-12. "Zur Frage der Erfindung des Algorithmus der Newtonschen Fluxionsrechnung." Bibliotheca Mathematica, series 3, Vol. 12, 56-60.

Zeitlinger, H. 1927. "A Newton bibliography." In Greenstreet. ed. 1927. pp 148-70.