— The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Isaac Newton was an English polymath who worked as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, historian and inventor, and a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. His Principia, first published in 1687, set out the laws of motion and universal gravitation and established classical mechanics. He also shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus.
Newton built the first reflecting telescope and showed that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum, work collected in Opticks in 1704. He became the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge at the age of 26, was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and served as president of the Royal Society. He was the first scientist to be buried at Westminster Abbey.
Newton built the first reflecting telescope and showed that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum, work collected in Opticks in 1704. He became the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge at the age of 26, was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and served as president of the Royal Society. He was the first scientist to be buried at Westminster Abbey.
Most quoted works
- Opticks 2
- The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 2
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
— The Correspondence Of Isaac Newton
This principle of nature being very remote from the conceptions of Philosophers, I forbore to describe it in that book, least I should be accounted an extravagant freak and so prejudice my Readers against all those things which were the main designe of the book.
— Opticks
— Opticks
Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing.
— The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
God who gave Animals self motion beyond our understanding is without doubt able to implant other principles of motion in bodies [which] we may understand as little. Some would readily grant this may be a Spiritual one; yet a mechanical one might be showne, did not I think it better to pass it by.
— The Correspondence of Isaac Newton: Published for the Royal Society. VOLUMES 1 through 7
Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy
Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.
Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.