Newton, Isaac - Motte, Andrew
£8,000
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 4 May 2016 at 12:00 BST
Description
Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the World, translated into English by Andrew Motte. To which is added The Laws of the Moon's Motion according to Gravity [by J. Machin]. London: Benjamin Motte, 1729. First English edition, 2 volumes, 8vo, 2 frontispieces, 47 folding plates and 2 folding tables, good quality facsimile title-page to volume 2, contemporary calf, volume 1 with gilt tooled border, with renewed red morocco gilt labels to spines, gilt tooling to spines, previous ownership signature to endpapers in volume 1, some minor marginal worming in both volumes with discreet repairs to final pages and plate in volume 1, some slight, occasional soiling in both volumes, a few minor marginal tears to volume 2, some marginal staining to initial 108 pages in volume 2, a few neat repairs to bindings, a little rubbing, lower joint on volume 1 splitting slightly [ESTC T142590, Babson 20] (2)
Footnote
Provenance: From the library of Professor Alexander Craik
Note: The first edition of the first English translation of Newton's Principia. [Reichner, The Grace K. Babson Collection of the Works of Sir Isaac Newton, 1950, p.15]
First published in 1687, Isaac Newton's seminal work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) or more commonly known as the Principia helped to lay the foundations for classical mechanics. The translation is based on Newton's third edition of the text. Translated and published in 1729 by Andrew and Benjamin Motte respectively, the book provides a key source of knowledge and ground-breaking scientific inquiry. Key to understanding the history of mathematics and its subsequent applications, the English translation of Prinicipia fosters a larger audience for scholarship.
Published in London at the printing-house with which their father Benjamin Motte Sr. was associated , Benjamin Motte (who famously published Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels) and Andrew Motte (a mathematician) printed the text in two volumes. This 1729 edition is considered by scholars overall to be faithful to Newton's original Latin script, and is the basis for a series of republications, many of which included revisions that included a more modernised English speech.
This edition was also frequently used for educational purposes and praised as being an authorised version. Scholars such as I. Bernard Cohen, an internationally praised Newton scholar and Harvard professor, have noted that the terminology in the 1729 version could be potentially confusing to contemporary readers, but praised the text for being consistent with the original rather than being 'over-revised'.
The two volumes include Newton's three books explaining his laws of motion, as well as an extra Newtonian essay and a work on lunar theory by John Machin (a professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London in the mid-1700s) titled 'The Laws of the Moon's Motion, According to Gravity.'