Tag Archives: Isaac Newton

Book of the Week — Opticks or, a Treatise of the Reflections…

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the Week — Opticks or, a Treatise of the Reflections…

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

qc353-n55-title

“God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.”

OPTICKS OR, A TREATISE OF THE REFLECTIONS…
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
London: Printed for S. Smith, and B. Walford, 1704
First edition, first issue
QC353 N55

Isaac Newton’s theories and experimentations on color and light grew out of his undergraduate studies. He introduced some of his ideas detailed in Opticks in an article he wrote for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1671. When Newton presented his concepts about the behavior and characteristics of light, particularly that white light is composed of a spectrum of colors, he posed a number of questions intended to stimulate further research. Opticks explains such phenomena as rainbows and contains two treatises supporting his side of the dispute with Leibniz that it was, indeed, he who discovered calculus.

“In a Letter written to Mr. Leibnitz in the Year 1676, and published by Dr. Wallis, I mentioned a Method by which I had found some general Theorems about squaring Curvilinear Figures, or comparing them with the Conic Sections, or other simplest Figures with which they may be compared. And some Years ago I lent out a Manuscript containing such Theorems, and having since met with some Things copied out of it, I have on this Occasion made it publick, prefixing to it an Introduction and subjoyning a Scholium concerning that Method.”

Nineteen copper-engraved folding plates. This first issue was published anonymously, with only the initials “I.N.” at the end of the Advertisement.

 

qc353-n55-fig8

 

qc353-n55-fig13

Book of the Week — De coloribus libellus

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the Week — De coloribus libellus

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

qc495-a7-1548-title

“Those colours are simple which belong to the elements, fire, air, water and earth. For air and water are naturally white in themselves, while fire and the sun are golden. The earth is also naturally white, but seems coloured because it is dyed. This becomes clear when we consider ashes; for they become white when the moisture which caused their dyeing is burned out of them; but not completely so, for they are also dyed by smoke, which is black. In the same way sand becomes golden, because the fiery red and black tints the water. The colour black belongs to the elements of things while they are undergoing a transformation of their nature. But the other colours are evidently due to mixture, when they are blended with each other. For darkness follows when light fails. — Loeb Classical Library translation

DE COLORIBUS LIBELLVS A SIMONE PORTIO…
Pseudo Aristotele (384 BC – 322 BC)
Florentinae: ex officina Laurentii Torrentini, 1548
Editio princips

This is perhaps the earliest work on color theory, attributed to Aristotle, who took his ideas from Empedocles and went a step further, creating a base line occupied by seven colors. Aristotle’s base line was applied to all color-systems up to the time of Isaac Newton. His assumption was to represent colors as actual characteristics of the surface of bodies and not as subjective phenomena produced by the eye or in the brain as a result of the properties of light. Aristotle observed colors very accurately, as well as their contrasts. He noted, for instance, that the violet appearing on white wool appeared different when on black wool and that colors appeared different in daylight than in candlelight. Only much later were these phenomena systematically examined and explained.

This edition was translated and edited with extensive scholarly commentary by Simone Porzio (1497-1554), a Neapolitan philosopher and scientist who was a fanatical disciple of Pomponazzi. Porzio eventually gave up lecturing on medicine at Piza and his scientific studies to focus on studying philosophy. Porzio denied immortality in all forms and taught that the human soul is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants.

Binding is old vellum with a red leather lettering piece.

qc495-a7-1548-pg23

Book of the Week – Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

30 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the Week – Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

QA803-A2-1687-titleQA803-A2-1687-pg1QA803-A2-1687-pg283

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
London, J. Streater, 1687
First edition
QA803 A2 1687

Although Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler had shown the way by describing the phenomena they observed, Isaac Newton explained the underlying universal laws of those phenomena. Newton’s theories overthrew the subjective interpretations of nature that had dominated science and natural philosophy since the time of Aristotle and ushered in the Age of Reason. By age forty-three, Newton had invented calculus, broken white light into its component colors, and built a telescope whose design is still used today. When he was forty-seven he published the book that profoundly changed the way we see the world and established his brilliance as an astronomer and mathematician. It is likely that no more than three hundred copies of the first edition were printed.

Principia gave us the three laws of motion, defined gravity, and provided the precise mathematical equations by which it could be measured. Edmund Halley was instrumental in getting Principia into print. Halley wheedled, flattered and bullied Newton, a recluse, into preparing his manuscript. Halley paid the cost of printing it out of his own pocket. Leibniz admired Newton’s math but was appalled by his fascination with alchemy. Of the birth of the Age of Reason, Alexander Pope wrote, “Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;/God said ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.” William Wordsworth wrote of Newton, “for ever Voyaging thro’ strange seas of Thought, alone.” Albert Einstein said that Newton “determined the course of western thought, research, and practice like no one else before or since.”

In the twenty-first century, Principia is still considered one of the greatest single contributions in the history of science.

University of Utah copy: Second and third books printed by different printers, evidenced by different type in the headings and a break in paging between the two books. Diagram on p. 22

Book of the Week – Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy…

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the Week – Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy…

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy…
Willem Jacob s’Gravesande (1688-1742)
London: Printed for J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1720
First English edition
QC19 G73 1720

Written in Latin by Willem Jacob s’Gravesande, Mathematical elements… was first published in Leiden in 1720. Illustrated with thirty-three folded engraved plates, this edition also contains a publisher’s catalog at the end.

Willem Jacob s’Gravesande was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in Leiden in 1715. A friend of Isaac Newton, s’Gravesande gained fame by being the first to teach Newtonian philosophy. Mathematical elements… was dedicated to Newton.

In 1734, s’Gravesande was promoted to chair of Philosophy. The Reverend John Theophilus Desaguliers, a member of the Royal Society, a Copley medal winner, inventor and Freemason, translated s’Gravesande’s book into English the same year it was first published in Leiden, apparently at s’Gravesande’s request. As was the practice in the eighteenth century, s’Gravesande constantly corrected and added to his work, each edition being an amplification of the first. The work went through six editions. s’Gravesande, who relied heavily on Newton’s Principia and Opticks, used a philosophical and well-argued method of justifying scientific truths by self-evidence and experimental verification.