Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the paperback edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- A note about dates
- Abbreviations used in footnotes
- 1 The discovery of a new world
- 2 A sober, silent, thinking lad
- 3 The solitary scholar
- 4 Resolving problems by motion
- 5 Anni mirabiles
- 6 Lucasian professor
- 7 Publication and crisis
- 8 Rebellion
- 9 Years of silence
- 10 Principia
- 11 Revolution
- 12 The Mint
- 13 President of the Royal Society
- 14 The priority dispute
- 15 Years of decline
- Bibliographical essay
- List of illustrations
- Index
- General index
Preface to the paperback edition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the paperback edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- A note about dates
- Abbreviations used in footnotes
- 1 The discovery of a new world
- 2 A sober, silent, thinking lad
- 3 The solitary scholar
- 4 Resolving problems by motion
- 5 Anni mirabiles
- 6 Lucasian professor
- 7 Publication and crisis
- 8 Rebellion
- 9 Years of silence
- 10 Principia
- 11 Revolution
- 12 The Mint
- 13 President of the Royal Society
- 14 The priority dispute
- 15 Years of decline
- Bibliographical essay
- List of illustrations
- Index
- General index
Summary
NOT a great deal of time has passed since I wrote a preface for the first printing of this book, and with that preface brought more than twenty years of work to a conclusion. After such a period I was, I confess, ready to move on to other matters, and with the exception of one Newtonian topic, I have done so. As a result I am not now prepared or inclined to revise the work in any fundamental way. Beyond correcting a few typographical and factual errors, I confine myself to indicating here some passages that reviews and recent publications have convinced me ought to be altered, and to mentioning the one topic on which my own research since completing the biography has led me to a deeper understanding.
In Chapter 2, pp. 57–58, I assert that Newton's secondary education did not include any significant mathematics. Recently, D. T. Whiteside has uncovered in Grantham a pocketbook dated 1654 that contains extensive “Notes for the Mathematicks.” [See “Newton the Mathematician,” in Z. Bechler, ed., Contemporary Newtonian Research (Dordrecht, 1982), pp. 110–11.] It appears to Whiteside to have been written in the hand of Henry Stokes, master of the grammar school of Grantham, which Newton began to attend during the year following the notes. Although most of the passage is devoted to elementary calculations, such as rules for determining the areas of fields, that a country gentleman might have found useful, not all of it remains at this level.
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- Information
- Never at RestA Biography of Isaac Newton, pp. vii - ixPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981