Meanwhile, investigations into the physical mechanism of the planets culminated in 1687 with the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia’. Although others had made important contributions to the question of the mutual attraction of bodies, Newton was the first to assimilate it all and to derive the exact equations for the fall of a body on […]

Isaac Newton’s ‘Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy’ (or ‘Principia’) was published in 1687. This work dealt with observed properties of bodies and their motions from which could be derived certain general laws relating to the forces of nature, general laws that could be used to predict other natural phenomena. The ‘Principia’ was divided into three […]