JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

[Image source for the above and below: Google Books, here.]

We’ve been enjoying the Neil deGrasse Tyson Cosmos and are just now finishing the episode dealing with Newton, and the Principia, Edmund Halley, and poor Robert Hooke. One thing I wanted to footnote to this production was to share the original–not shown in the series though something very close to it does appear–of an image for Newton’s “cannon”. Though he actually doesn’t use the word “cannon” he does write on the motion of projectiles and the forces at which they are projected and the possibility of such a thing reaching a velocity great enough to send the thing into orbit.  The idea/gedankenexperiment and image appears early on in Newton’s A Treatise of the System of the World, which is the English translation (with corrections and some changes) of what was to be book three (De mundi systemate) of the Principia, and which was published in 1728, a year after Newton’s death. (On the title page the book is announced as “translated into English” but does not mention a translator/s, unknown as a certainty to this day but is supposed to be Andrew Motte.)