Negotiating the Principia: the failure of Newton's arguments to persuade his readers, 1684-94

Thesis

When Isaac Newton’s 'Principia Mathematica' was published in the summer of 1687, it met with immediate acclaim. Through a close examination of contemporary reading notes, this thesis aims to establish the extent to which that acclaim was the result of his peers’ assent to the arguments contained in the book.

It will demonstrate that, so far as can be reliably inferred from the extant documentary evidence, early readers were generally not persuaded by the demonstrations in the 'Principia'. Newton’s peers commonly didn’t scrutinise the arguments in his book; when they did scrutinise them, they commonly didn’t understand them; and when they did understand them, they commonly didn’t agree with them. They frequently disputed the composition of his proofs, the validity of his methodology, and the articulation of his foundational concepts. When circumstances allowed, they communicated these misgivings back to Newton, who often altered his text in response, re-working, re-phrasing and re-structuring his demonstrations. They questioned both the formulation of his method of first and last ratios and his mathematisation of force, and none of the readers for whom there is reliable evidence assented to the entirety of Newton’s proof of the inverse-square law. To the extent that they were persuaded by the correctness of Newton’s conclusions, it was either because they were successfully able to reconstruct his arguments within their pre-existing conceptual frameworks; or because they held face-to-face conversations with the author in which they were able to query, contest and negotiate the composition of his text.

In other words, the book was very ineffective at persuading readers of the validity of the arguments it contained. This means that the acclaim 'Principia' received at the moment of publication was unwarranted: it must have had some cause other than readers’ assent to its demonstrations.

Authors: Baker, K

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-aebb60e8p
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English