Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and note on the text
- INTRODUCTION
- PART I DRAMA AND POLITICS
- PART II AUTHORSHIP AND AUTHORITY
- 5 Pepys and the private parts of monarchy
- 6 Milton, Samson Agonistes, and the Restoration
- 7 Milton, Dryden, and the politics of literary controversy
- 8 “Is he like other men?” The meaning of the Principia Mathematica, and the author as idol
- PART III WOMEN AND WRITING
- PART IV EMPIRE AND AFTERMATHS
- Index
8 - “Is he like other men?” The meaning of the Principia Mathematica, and the author as idol
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations and note on the text
- INTRODUCTION
- PART I DRAMA AND POLITICS
- PART II AUTHORSHIP AND AUTHORITY
- 5 Pepys and the private parts of monarchy
- 6 Milton, Samson Agonistes, and the Restoration
- 7 Milton, Dryden, and the politics of literary controversy
- 8 “Is he like other men?” The meaning of the Principia Mathematica, and the author as idol
- PART III WOMEN AND WRITING
- PART IV EMPIRE AND AFTERMATHS
- Index
Summary
[Leibniz] falls foul upon my Philosophy as if I (and by consequence the ancient Phenicians & Greeks) introduced Miracles and occult qualities… notwithstanding all this, he glories in the number of disciples, you know what his disciples are in England & that he has spent his life in keeping a general correspondence for making disciples, whilst I leave truth to sift for it self.
Isaac NewtonWe always took care on Sunday to place ourselves before him, as he sat with the heads of the Colleges; we gaz'd on him, never enough satisfy'd, as on somewhat divine… drawn forth into light before, as to his person, from his beloved privacy in the walls of a college.
William StukeleyThis paper links one aspect of the genealogy of Newton's Principia to the processes of self-fashioning which its author adopted. I examine how Newton prepared the Principia for publication during the mid-1680s in the light of his belief that the Ancients had once possessed the true religion and philosophy, and then lost it because of idolatrous tendencies. I demonstrate how he controlled accounts of the meaning of the Principia by selectively allowing access to himself and to his private notes.
THE AUTHOR OF THE PRINCIPIA
From Newton's methodological claims that he did not wish to invent hypotheses, or that he only published at the request of others, commentators have constructed a psychological account of Newton as a private and shy workaholic.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Culture and Society in the Stuart RestorationLiterature, Drama, History, pp. 159 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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