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Updated: June 7, 2025
If the truth must be told, the sage Leibnitz had a wisdom which now looks dreadfully like that of a wiseacre! In Mathematics even, he did invent the Differential Calculus, but it is certain also he never could believe in Newton's System of the Universe, nor would read the PRINCIPIA at all.
With this Hobbes's programme of a mechanical science of nature is fulfilled. The heavens and the earth are made subject to the same law of gravitation. Chief work, Philosophic Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687. Works, 1779 seq. On Newton cf. Newton resembles Boyle in uniting profound piety with the rigor of scientific thought.
Astronomy had no manifest connection with terrestrial physics before the publication of the "Principia"; that of chemistry with physics is of still more modern revelation; that of physics and chemistry with physiology, has been stoutly denied within the recollection of most of us, and perhaps still may be. Or, to take a case which affords a closer parallel with that of medicine.
But the man himself was still the simple, modest gentleman. The title did not spoil him he was a noble man from boyhood. His duties as Master of the Mint did not interfere with his studies and scientific investigations. He revised and rewrote his "Principia," and in Seventeen Hundred Thirteen the new edition was issued.
In Westminster Abbey there repose, almost side by side, by no conscious design yet with deep significance, the mortal remains of Isaac Newton and of Charles Darwin. "'The Origin of Species," said Wallace, "will live as long as the 'Principia' of Newton."
It was by the aid of the Royal Society that Newton published his "Principia." If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical Transactions, were destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though incompletely, recorded.
If the theories of heat, cohesion, crystallization, and chemical action, are destined, as there can be little doubt that they are, to become deductive, the truths which will then be regarded as the principia of those sciences would probably, if now announced, appear quite as novel as the law of gravitation appeared to the cotemporaries of Newton; possibly even more so, since Newton’s law, after all, was but an extension of the law of weight—that is, of a generalization familiar from of old, and which already comprehended a not inconsiderable body of natural phenomena.
Let us try to answer philosophically. The moralist inquires whether art is either good in itself or a means to good. Before answering, we will ask what he means by the word "good," not because it is in the least doubtful, but to make him think. In fact, Mr. G.E. Moore has shown pretty conclusively in his Principia Ethica that by "good" everyone means just good.
Although Newton lived for almost forty years after the appearance of the Principia, his teaching was, when he died, only to some extent accepted in his own country, whilst outside England he counted scarcely twenty adherents; if we may believe the introductory note to Voltaire's exposition of his theory.
It is true that one shadow of justification offers itself for Phil.'s distinction. All principles are doctrines, but all doctrines are not principles; which, then, in particular? Why, those properly are principles which contain the principia, the beginnings, or starting-points of evolution, out of which any system of truth is evolved.
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