The Principia: The Authoritative Translation: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

Sir Isaac Newton

Feb 2016 · Univ of California Press

About this ebook

In his monumental 1687 work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known familiarly as the Principia, Isaac Newton laid out in mathematical terms the principles of time, force, and motion that have guided the development of modern physical science. Even after more than three centuries and the revolutions of Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics continues to account for many of the phenomena of the observed world, and Newtonian celestial dynamics is used to determine the orbits of our space vehicles.

This authoritative, modern translation by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, the first in more than 285 years, is based on the 1726 edition, the final revised version approved by Newton; it includes extracts from the earlier editions, corrects errors found in earlier versions, and replaces archaic English with contemporary prose and up-to-date mathematical forms.

Newton's principles describe acceleration, deceleration, and inertial movement; fluid dynamics; and the motions of the earth, moon, planets, and comets. A great work in itself, the Principia also revolutionized the methods of scientific investigation. It set forth the fundamental three laws of motion and the law of universal gravity, the physical principles that account for the Copernican system of the world as emended by Kepler, thus effectively ending controversy concerning the Copernican planetary system.
 
The translation-only edition of this preeminent work is truly accessible for today's scientists, scholars, and students.

Ratings and reviews

It feels like I have the whole universe in my hands...I'll keep reading it again and again till I understand everything clearly. Wow! Its a pride.

Excellent work. There is a very small typo on page 88-89. In Corollary 2 of Lemma 3, it states "...vanishing arcs ab, be, cd..." where it should state "...vanishing arcs ab, bc, cd..." (I now see it is correct in your original pages, it must be an OCR error).

Nice one

About the author

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) was Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He was the author of Benjamin Franklin's Science, Interactions, and Science and the Founding Fathers. 
 
Anne Whitman (1937–1984) was coeditor (with I. Bernard Cohen and Alexander Koyré) of the Latin edition, with variant readings, of the Principia. 
 
Julia Budenz, author of From the Gardens of Flora Baum, is a multilingual classicist and poet.