Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World

Cotes’s preface to the second edition champions Newton’s experimental philosophy against scholastic “occult qualities” and Cartesian vortices. He argues from terrestrial gravitation and pendulum experiments to mutual attraction, then by Keplerian area and period–distance laws to centripetal forces inversely as the square of distance, unifying moon, planets, and comets under a single gravitational principle. The prefaces chronicle Newton’s method (analysis from phenomena; synthesis to prediction), Halley’s role in pressing publication, and later refinements to lunar theory, precession, comet orbits, and fluid resistance. Altogether, the volume frames the *Principia* as both a mathematical edifice and a philosophical watershed: geometry and experiment joined to reveal a world governed not by speculative mechanisms but by demonstrable universal laws.

This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1934.