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[rmiller]

This might sound like a surprising choice of reading material, but I purchased a copy of "Principia" by Isaac Newton.

I think this is an extremely important book; it contained so much that contributed to humankind's leap in knowledge that even one third of the material it contained would have moved us a big step ahead.

So I decided to buy a copy. It was hard to find. The good-quality bookstore I usually shop at did not have a copy; I had to special-order it. But it was worth it.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Now this is cool.

One often reads of the publications the greats wrote - (Newton, Galileo, Corpernicus etc...), challenging set concepts and beliefs or proposing new ideas....but never actually picking up a copy and reading it for yourself.

I read Galileo's Daughter notes she shared with her father, but not "Principia".

Excellent!

[rmiller]

Aug 16, 2009 20:46:23 GMT -6 Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe said:

Now this is cool.

Yes, it is.

It is also a point of pride to have "Principia" on my bookshelf.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Chicks dig men of science with high brow reading material on shelves.

A lavalamp doesn't hurt either.

[Centaur]

I read a copy of the Principia that I checked out some years ago from my local public library. They had it filed in the mathematics section. I told a librarian not to be misled by the word mathematics in the full title. It’s a physics book, and since Newton physicists have all depended greatly on mathematics for their explanations. I told her it may be the most important book in the library – the one that inspired the type of thinking about the predictability of nature that led to the industrial revolution and the modern world in which we live. It should not have been sitting on the wrong library shelf. The matter was sent to a library committee. After a month deliberating, they placed the book in the section for the subclass of dynamics within physics.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

The Dewy Decimal system works!

(It took a committee to reshelve it.....heh... )