Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Newtonian Mechanics
Sir Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton

The 1689 portrait by Godfrey Kneller.


    I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
- Sir Isaac Newton

    Although the idea of the mathematical universe was widely held by renaissance thinkers, the mathematics of the early renaissance, inherited from the Greeks and Islamic mathematicians was inadequate for the job of describing the laws of nature; a new type of mathematics was needed to carry out the program of formulating these laws in terms of mathematics. Although Fermat developed the mathematics that is now considered the calculus, he did not complete his work in this area.

    The story of a 23 year old spending his time in the country while the plagues ravaged England, interrupting his studies at Cambridge. Put together the ideas of the calculus, which next to Euclidean geometry, has been called the greatest creation in all of mathematics. If that wasn't enough, he created this new mathematics for the purpose of describing the laws of nature. Newton and the apple. The story of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or Principia for short, as the new book of nature, the Principia was the key to the mathematical Universe! The three laws. The inverse square law of gravitation. The Principia, the single most influencial book written since the Greek age, gave us the keys to the mathematical universe.

    The publication of the Principia had a profound effect on the intellectual climate of Europe. The date of the publication of the Principia, 1687, is given as the birth date of the enlightenment, or age of reason. The Principia provides the motivating jolt--soon laboratories, scientifice journals,...A frenzy of science.

    The life and times of Newton. Newton considered the chief value of his work to be the support that it gave to the evidence that the universe was God's handiwork.

    Leibnitz

    Calculus, the mathematics of motion and change is commonly divided into two parts: The Differential calculus and the Integral calculus.

    There were several types of unsolved problems that were solved by the calculus.

  • The Tangent Problem --The Limit of a Sequence.

  • Given a position function, find the veloocity and acceration

  • Find the maximum and Minumum values of a function

  • Find the Area bounded by a fucntion -- The Limit of a Series

  • Find the length of a curve

  • Find the volumes bounded by a surface

    Both the Tangent and the Area problem lead us to the concept of the limit. With the limit concept the lamp is opened and the infinite genie emerges!

Refernece: Sir Isaac Newton and the Unification of Physics & Astronomy

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