An Introduction to the History of ScienceLibby, Walter
History
An Introduction to the History of Science
Libby, Walter
Science -- History
Graunt, John, _Natural and Political Observations ... made upon the
Bills of Mortality, with reference to the Government, Religion,
Trade, Growth, Air, Diseases, and the several changes of the City_.
3d edition, 1665.
Sprat, Thomas, _The History of the Royal Society of London, for the
Improving of Natural Knowledge_. 1667.
Malpighi, Marcello, _Dissertatio epistolica de Bombyce; Societati Regiæ
Londini dicata_. 1669. (On the silkworm.)
Evelyn, John, _Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees_. 1670.
Horrocks, Jeremiah, _Opera [Astronomica] postuma_. 1673.
Malpighi, Marcello, _Anatome Plantarum_. 1675.
Willughby, Francis, _Ornithology_ (revised by John Ray). 1676.
Evelyn, John, _A Philosophical Discourse of Earth, relating to the
Culture and Improvement of it for Vegetation_. 1676.
Grew, Nehemiah, _The Anatomy of Plants_. 1682.
Willughby, F., _Historia Piscium_. 1686.
Ray, John, _Historia Plantarum_. 2 vols., 1686-88.
Flamsteed, John, _Tide-Table for 1687_.
Newton, Isaac, _Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica_. Autore
Is. Newton. Imprimatur: S. Pepys, Reg. Soc. Præses. Julii 5, 1686.
4to. Londini, 1687.
After the Society had ordered that Newton's _Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy_ should be printed, it was found that the funds had
been exhausted by the publication of Willughby's book on fishes. It was
accordingly agreed that Halley should undertake the business of looking
after it, and printing it at his own charge, which he had engaged to do.
Shortly after, the President of the Royal Society, Mr. Samuel Pepys, was
desired to license Mr. Newton's book.
It was not merely by defraying the expense of publication that Halley
contributed to the success of the _Principia_. He, Wren, Hooke, and
other Fellows of the Royal Society, concluded in 1684 that if Kepler's
third law were true, then the attraction exerted on the different
planets would vary inversely as the square of the distance. What, then,
would be the orbit of a planet under a central attraction varying as the
inverse square of the distance? Halley found that Newton had already
determined that the form of the orbit would be an ellipse. Newton had
been occupied with the problem of gravitation for about eighteen years,
but until Halley induced him to do so, had hesitated, on account of
certain unsettled points, to publish his results.
He writes: "I began (1666) to think of gravity extending to the orb of
the moon, ... and thereby compared the force requisite to keep the moon
in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, and
found them answer pretty nearly." As early as March of that same year
Hooke had communicated to the Society an account of experiments in
reference to the force of gravity at different distances from the
surface of the earth, either upwards or downwards. At this and at every
point in Newton's discovery the records of co-workers are to be found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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