Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Amsterdam: Sumptibus Societatis, 1714. 2nd Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 2nd Edition. Hardcover. 4to (245 x 181 mm). [28], 484, [8] pp. Title printed in red and black and with engraved vignette; engraved folding plate of the cometary orbit facing p. 465; woodcut text diagrams throughout. Bound in full contemporary speckled calfskin, spine with 5 raised bands richly gilt-tooled in compartments and with gilt-lettered label in second compartment, red-sprinkled edges, marbled endpapers (front joint partly split towards head; boards and extremities rubbed; head of spine scuffed with cap bands showing; corners slightly bumped and worn). Pages partially unopened at upper edge. Text with light even browning and pale spotting (folding plate stronger). Provenance: ink inscription "Sancti Arnulphi Mettensis, 1763"* on title page. ----

FIRST AMSTERDAM REPRINT OF THE SUBSTANTIVE SECOND EDITION AND "A FINE EXAMPLE OF BOOKMAKING" (Macomber-Babson). Newton made constant revisions to the Principia which, during the long interim until the second edition, circulated only in manuscript. First published in Cambridge in the previous year, the second edition is the first to include the Scholium generale, and shows considerable additions, in particular to the chapters on lunar theory and the theory of comets. The German mathematician and polyhistor Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) had published theories that were close to Newton's own, which forced him to sharpen his arguments and therefore this edition was also provided with a long anti-Leibnizian preface by Newton's editor Roger Cotes.
Isaac Newton's (1643-1727) work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica is considered "the greatest work in the history of science. Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed, Newton explained the underlying universal laws. The Principia provided the great synthesis of the cosmos, proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of graviation could be explained, in mathematical terms, within a single physical theory. [...] The same laws of gravitation and motion rule everywhere; [...] It was this grand conception that produced a general revolution in human thought, equalled perhaps only by that following Darwin's Origin of the Species [...] The second edition of the Principia was not published until 1713 and the first English translation, by Andrew Motte, not until 1729" (Printing and the Mind of Man 161).
"Newton's masterwork was worked up and put into its final form in an incredibly short time. His strategy was to develop the subject of general dynamics from a mathematical point of view in book I, then to apply his most important results to solving astronomical and physical problems in book III. Book II, [...] is almost independent, and appears extraneous. [...] As Karl Popper has pointed out, although "Newton's dynamics achieved a unification of Galileo's terrestrial and Kepler's celestial physics," it appears that "from a logical point of view, Newton's theory, strictly speaking, contradicts both Galileo's and Kepler's". [...] One of the most important consequences of Newton's analysis is that it must be one and the same law of force that operates in the centrally directed acceleration of the planetary bodies (toward the sun) and of satellites (toward planets), and that controls the linear downward acceleration of freely falling bodies. This force of universal gravitation is also shown to be the cause of the tides, through the action of the sun and the moon on the seas" (DSB).
*Arnulf of Metz (c. 582-645), a Frankish bishop of Metz who retired to the Abeey of Remiremont, can certainly not been to owner of this copy, but may be a Benedictine monk who lived in the abbey before it was disestablished in 1790.
References & Bibliography: Macomber-Babson, Supplement, p. 4; Wallis 11; Honeyman 2305; DSB X, p. 60-78 - Visit our website to see more images!