eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:26am on 2007-07-05

"I wish we could derive the rest of the phænomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy." -- Sir Isaac Newton, in the preface to Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published 1687-07-05 (this quotation copied from the 1729 translation by Andrew Motte; if anyone cares to supply the original Latin to put alongside it, that'd be nifty see the first comment for the original Latin.)

[Hmm. Okay, yeah, I guess you could say that his work "afforded some light". Kinda like you could say that Lennon & McCartney or J.S. Bach "had a few hits".]

There are 3 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] marnanel.livejournal.com at 02:35pm on 2007-07-05
Utinam cætera Naturæ phæ­nomena ex principiis Mechanicis eodem argumentandi genere deri­ vare liceret. Nam multa me movent ut nonnihil suspicer ea omnia ex viribus quibusdam pendere posse, quibus corporum particulæ per causas nondum cognitas vel in se mutuo impelluntur & se­ cundum figuras regulares cohærent, vel ab invicem fugantur & recedunt: quibus viribus ignotis, Philosophi hactenus Naturam fru­stra tentarunt. Spero autem quod vel huic Philosophandi modo, vel veriori alicui, Principia hic posita lucem aliquam præbebunt.
 
posted by [identity profile] marnanel.livejournal.com at 02:36pm on 2007-07-05
Sorry for all the extra posts: I c&p'd the Latin text from la.wikisource to save myself retyping it all, but they had extra spaces in silly places.
 
posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 08:45am on 2007-07-07
Yah, I noticed the funky spaces as the iterations of notification-email came in, and figured that fixing them was what you were doing with the multiple submissions.

Thank you for posting the Latin!

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