Pitfalls in the Editing of Newton's Papers

Hall A. Rupert Hall Marie Boas , “Clarke and Newton”, Isis, lii (1961), 583–5; Cohen I. Bernard Koyré Alexandre , “Newton and the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xv (1962), 63–126.

It was first printed in Lord King's Life of Locke (2nd edn, 1830), 289–400 and reprinted from the same MS in Turnbull H. W. (eds), The correspondence of Isaac Newton (7 vols, Cambridge, 1959–77), iii, 71–76. This is a copy; the date “Mar. 89/90” seems to have been added after receipt, with the name “Mr Newton”.

Cambridge University Library MS Add. 3965, ff. 1–3. Cf. Ball W. W. Rouse , An essay on Newton's Principia (London, 1893), 116–20. A complete text is in Hall A. Rupert Hall Marie Boas , Unpublished scientific papers of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1962), 293–301.

On these MSS see Hall Hall , op. cit. (ref. 3) and especially the facsimiles in Whiteside D. T. , The preliminary manuscripts for Isaac Newton's 1687 Principia, 1684–1686 (Cambridge, 1989). The “Locke MS” (Add. 3965) is on pp. 241–6.

Herivel J. W. , “The original of the two propositions discovered by Newton in December 1679?”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xiv (1961), 23–33.

Hall A. Rupert Hall Marie Boas , “The date of ‘On motion in ellipses’”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xvi (1963), 23–28.

See Brewster David Sir , Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton (Edinburgh, 1855), i, 471, and Cohen I. Bernard , Introduction to Newton's Principia (Cambridge, 1971), 69.

Review by Whiteside D. T. of The background to Newton's Principia by Herivel John , History of Science, v (1966), 104–17, pp. 107–8 and 115, note 4.

Westfall R. S. , “A note on Newton's demonstration of motion in ellipses”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xxii (1969), 51–60.

Isaac Newton: The Principia. A new translation by Cohen I. Bernard Whitman Anne (Berkeley, 1999), 7.

Westfall Richard S. , Never at rest (Cambridge, 1980), 387 and n. 145.

Shapiro Alan E. , “Beyond the dating game: Watermark clusters and the composition of Newton's Opticks”, in Harman P. M. Shapiro Alan E. (eds), The investigation of difficult things: Essays on Newton and the history of the exact sciences (Cambridge, 1992), 181–227.

Brewster , op. cit. (ref. 7), ii, 371–2, 374–5.

More Louis Trenchard , Isaac Newton (New York, 1934), 158, 159, n. 3. More's assurance (159, n. 5) that “[Jacob] Boehme's works were in [Newton's] library” has not been confirmed by John Harrison in The library of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1978).

Royal Society, Newton tercentenary celebrations (Cambridge, 1946), 27, 32; ?written about 1942.

Taylor F. Sherwood , “An alchemical work of Sir Isaac Newton”, Ambix, v (1956), 59–84. See also Boas Marie Hall Rupert , “Newton's chemical experiments”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, ix (1958), 113–52, reprinted in Hall A. Rupert , Newton, his friends and his foes (Aldershot, 1993). The object of this paper was to draw attention to the presence in the Portsmouth Collection at Cambridge of these records of what Newton had actually attempted, as well as the very many alchemical transcripts.

Dobbs B. J. T. , The foundations of Newton's alchemy (Cambridge, 1975), 134, discussing Keynes MS 18, King's College, Cambridge. The author is not, of course, saying that there are no later MSS.

Ibid. , 156; the experimental notes were first discussed in Hall and Hall, op. cit. (ref. 6).

Dobbs , op. cit. (ref. 17), 175–6. Her doubts are emphasized on p. 175.

Ibid., 176–8, 184–5.

Westfall , Never at rest (ref. 11), 370.

Newman William , “Newton's Clavis as Starkey's Key”, Isis, lxxviii (1987), 564–74.

Dictionary of scientific biography, s.v. “Starkey, George”; that Starkey was the author of these MSS has been suspected at least since 1963; see also Harold Jantz in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, lxxxiv (1972), 3–25. William Newman has more recently published Gehennical fire: The lives of George Starkey … (Cambridge, Mass., 1994).

That is, antimony trisulphide, or stibnite; metallic antimony was the “regulus” or “star” (from its crystalline form).

Newman , “Newton's Clavis as Starkey's Key” (ref. 22), 569, 573; Dobbs , op. cit. (ref. 7), 253.

Dobbs , op. cit. (ref. 7), 132 affirms; “Nine of the manuscripts in the Keynes Collection [at King's College, Cambridge] datable to the period 1668–1675 seem to depend primarily on unpublished sources.”.

Newman , op. cit. (ref. 22), 569.

Dobbs B. J. T. , The Janus faces of genius (Cambridge, 1991), 15. There is no reason to doubt that Burndy MS 1031B (= Burndy MS 16= Sotheby MS 113) [Vegetation of Metals] was a composition or digest by Newton, which found an echo in the Principia (see Hall A. Rupert , “Isaac Newton and the aerial nitre”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, lii (1998), 51–61).

Koyré Alexandre , Newtonian studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 82–95.

A catalogue of the Portsmouth Collection… (Cambridge, 1888), 48.

Koyré , op. cit. (ref. 29), 83, n. 2.

Dobbs , Foundations (ref. 17), pp. xi–xii.

Ibid., 125.

Ibid., 193, 199.

Ibid., 125.

Ibid., 193. The question is answered negatively.

McGuire J. E. Tamny Martin , Certain philosophical questions: Newton's Trinity notebook (Cambridge, 1983), 319. On this same page, the importance of Descartes for the formation of Newton's mentality is rightly emphasized. See also Feingold M. , “Newton, Leibniz and Barrow too”, Isis, lxxxiv (1993), 310–38.

Koyré , op. cit. (ref. 29), 156–61.

Westfall Richard S. , Force in Newton's physics (London, 1971).

Idem in Bonelli M. L. Righini Shea W. R. (eds), Reason, experiment and mysticism in the Scientific Revolution (New York, 1975), 189–232, 305, n. 2.

Cohen I. B. in Contemporary Newtonian research , ed. by Bechler Zev (Dordrecht, 1982); Whiteside D. T. in Isis, lxviii (1977), 116–21; Dobbs in Janus faces of genius (ref. 28), 3ff.

Harrison , op. cit. (ref. 14), no. 1608. “Glasses” in London and Cambridge cost Newton 29s.; chemicals, £2.

Dobbs , op. cit. (ref. 28), 139–40; Westfall , op. cit. (ref. 39), 403, n. 26. Westfall notes that an allusion to Clerselier's edition of Descartes's letters places the date of writing after 1668.

Dobbs , op. cit. (ref. 28), 141.

Ibid., 143.

Browne Janet , Charles Darwin (London, 1995), 436–47.

Dobbs , op. cit. (ref. 28), 141–2.

Ibid., 143–4; Newton Isaac , Principia (London, 1687), 352–4. Turnbull (eds), The correspondence of Isaac Newton (ref. 2), ii, 437. In the second and third editions the General Scholium appears after Book II, Proposition 31 and the wording is modified.

“Resistentia pyxidum in partibus internis aut nulla erit aut plane insensibilis.”.

Westfall Richard S. , “Uneasily fitful reflections on fits of easy transmission”, in Palter R. (ed.), The annus mirabilis of Sir Isaac Newton, 1666–1966 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 93. This was of course written before Professor Dobbs had published.

Turnbull (eds), The correspondence of Isaac Newton (ref. 2), ii, 288–96.

Dobbs , op. cit. (ref. 28), 142–3; Hall Hall , op. cit. (ref. 3), 147.

Hall Hall , op. cit. (ref. 3), 147, not quoted by Dobbs.

Ibid., 286. Whiteside D. T. (ed.), The mathematical papers of Isaac Newton, vi (Cambridge, 1974), 79.

Isaac Newton, Opticks, 3rd edn (London, 1721), 323. Guerlac Henry , “Francis Hawksbee, expérimentateur au profit de Newton”, in his Essays and papers in the history of modern science (Baltimore and London, 1977); first published in Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xvi (1963), 113–28. See also Hall A. Rupert , All was light: An introduction to Newton's Opticks (Oxford, 1993), 352ff.

McGuire Tamny , op. cit. (ref. 37), 319; Shapiro Alan E. , The optical papers of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1984). 4.

See McGuire Tamny , op. cit. (ref. 37), 147; as these authors remark, Descartes's influence was often negative: “It is undeniable that Descartes's views are especially important to Newton, because they deny what he affirms.” The notebook is C.U.L. MS 3996. More than half a century ago I wrote of this MS, “One point at least is beyond doubt… the two writers who exercised the greatest influence on Newton at this time [1661–1665] were Descartes and Boyle. Descartes's conceptions of the structure of matter were very familiar to Newton and already, tentatively, he was critical of them” ( Hall A. Rupert , “Sir Isaac Newton's notebook, 1661–1665”, Cambridge historical journal, ix (1948), 1239–50).

McGuire Tamny , op. cit. (ref. 37), 340.

Ibid. , 167–70, 380–3. Note Newton's awareness of the elliptical shape of the orbit. For his refutations of the Cartesian theory of colours, see Shapiro , op. cit. (ref. 56), 105–7, 161, 435–7, 533.

McGuire Tamny , op. cit. (ref. 37), 431–5; Turnbull (eds), The correspondence of Isaac Newton (ref. 2), i, 92–102.

Ibid., 163–7, 175–80.

Westfall , op. cit. (ref. 50), 93.

Hall Hall , op. cit. (ref. 3), 114–15, 148–9. In the second edition of the Principia, 1713, in the newly-introduced Third Rule of Reasoning in Philosophy, Newton correctly used the technical terms of medieval philosophy “intensio” and “remissio”: “Those qualities of bodies that cannot be intended or remitted and that belong to all bodies upon which experiments can be made should be taken as the qualities of all bodies universally.” Isaac Newton, The Principia, Mathematical Principies of Natural Philosophy, A New Translation by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman… (Berkeley, California, 1999), 795. On fourteenth-century mechantes — Whose principies prevailed generally into the early seventeenth century — See Clagett Marshall , The science of mechanics in the Middle Ages (Madison and London, 1959), and works by Edward Grant, John Murdoch, Curtis Wilson et alii.

McGuire Tamny , op. cit. (ref. 37), 143–4.

Ibid., 140.

Whiteside D. T. , The preliminary manuscripts for Newton's Principia (Cambridge, 1980), 3.

In the collection of essays edited by Osler Margaret J. , Rethinking the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, 2000), J. E. McGuire has published a paper entitled “The fate of the date: The theology of Newton's Principia revisited” (pp. 271–95), in which he adds his authority to Professor Dobbs's contention that MS 4003, De gravitatione, was composed in 1684. Assuming this date, McGuire has developed an argument that “the Principia is the framework that allows the geometry of motion to become uncovered within the sacred space of the ‘System of the World’. Viewed in this way, it is the vehicle of aletheia [i.e. truth], it is that which allows the true structure of creation to manifest itself”. I am not sure that I grasp the full meaning of these somewhat cryptic words, but at least it is clear that the writer has no intention of strengthening Dobbs's original argument.

Cf. Koyré Alexandre , Etudes Galiléennes (Paris, 1939).