James Gleick: Isaac Newton (2004)

“Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.

James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it can truly be said: We are all Newtonians.”

Publisher Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2004
Vintage Series
ISBN 1400032954, 9781400032952
288 pages

review (John Banville, The Guardian)

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Niccolò Guicciardini: Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method (2009)

Historians of mathematics have devoted considerable attention to Isaac Newton’s work on algebra, series, fluxions, quadratures, and geometry. In Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method, Niccolò Guicciardini examines a critical aspect of Newton’s work that has not been tightly connected to Newton’s actual practice: his philosophy of mathematics.

Newton aimed to inject certainty into natural philosophy by deploying mathematical reasoning (titling his main work The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy most probably to highlight a stark contrast to Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy). To that end he paid concerted attention to method, particularly in relation to the issue of certainty, participating in contemporary debates on the subject and elaborating his own answers. Guicciardini shows how Newton carefully positioned himself against two giants in the “common” and “new” analysis, Descartes and Leibniz. Although his work was in many ways disconnected from the traditions of Greek geometry, Newton portrayed himself as antiquity’s legitimate heir, thereby distancing himself from the moderns.

Guicciardini reconstructs Newton’s own method by extracting it from his concrete practice and not solely by examining his broader statements about such matters. He examines the full range of Newton’s works, from his early treatises on series and fluxions to the late writings, which were produced in direct opposition to Leibniz. The complex interactions between Newton’s understanding of method and his mathematical work then reveal themselves through Guicciardini’s careful analysis of selected examples. Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method uncovers what mathematics was for Newton, and what being a mathematician meant to him.

Publisher MIT Press, 2009
Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology Series
ISBN 0262013177, 9780262013178
422 pages

publisher
google books

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John Edward Fletcher: A Study of the Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher, ‘Germanus Incredibilis’: With a Selection of his Unpublished Correspondence and an Annotated Translation of his Autobiography (2011)

Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit in 17th-century Rome, was an enigma. Intensely pious and a prolific author, he was also a polymath fascinated with everything from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the tiny creatures in his microscope.

His correspondence with popes, princes and priests was a window into the restless energy of the period. It showed first-hand the seventeenth-century’s struggle for knowledge in astronomy, microscopy, geology, chemistry, musicology, Egyptology, horology.. The list goes on.

Kircher’s books reflect the mind-set of 17th-century scholars – endless curiosity and a substantial larding of naiveté: Kircher scorned alchemy as the wishful thinking of charlatans, yet believed in dragons.

His life and correspondence provide a key to the transition from the Middle Ages to a new scientific age. This book, though unpublished, has been long quoted and referred to. Awaited by scholars and specialists of Kircher, it is finally available with this edition.

Edited for publication by Elizabeth Fletcher
Editorial adjustment for the Aries Book Series by Garry Trompf
Publisher Brill, Leiden/Boston, 2011
Volume 12 of Aries Book Series
ISBN 9004207120, 9789004207127
656 pages

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google books

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