Some 300 years before Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time, an earlier holder of the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge published a book which, according to author Andrew May, proved just as fashionable to own, if not necessarily to read or understand.
That book was Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (“Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”), the revolutionary scientific work of Isaac Newton, in which he codified his laws of motion. “Science has continued to advance since Newton’s time,” May points out, “but it has done so by building on his work, not by sweeping it aside. (…) There is no disputing the fact that we live in a Newtonian universe.”
As May explains in this concise, eminently readable introduction to Newton, there’s…
Full review published in the July 2015 (#122) issue of BBC Sky at Night magazine.
