Visiting Newton's Atelier before the Principia, 1679-1684
Michael Nauenberg

TL;DR
This paper reconstructs Newton's early development of fundamental concepts leading to the Principia by analyzing historical letters and diagrams, revealing how Newton formulated key propositions and developed a rapid method for orbital calculations.
Contribution
It presents a novel reconstruction of Newton's thought process before the Principia using historical correspondence and diagram analysis, offering new insights into his development of orbital methods.
Findings
Reconstruction of Newton's early ideas based on letters and diagrams
Identification of a rapid convergence method for orbital curves
Insights into how Newton formulated key propositions in the Principia
Abstract
The manuscripts that presumably contained Newton's early development of the fundamental concepts that led to his Principia have been lost. A plausible reconstruction of this development is presened based on Newton's exchange of letters with Robert Hooke in 1679, with Edmund Halley in 1686, and on some clues in the diagram associated with Proposition1 in Book1 of the Principia that have been ignored in the past. The graphical method associated with this proposition leads to a rapidly convergent method to obtain orbital curves for central forces, and elucidates how Newton may have have been led to formulate some of his other propositions in the Principia.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsMechanics and Biomechanics Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · Historical and Literary Studies
