Expressed aim and topics covered
The Preface of the work states:
... Rational Mechanics will be the sciences of motion resulting from any forces whatsoever, and of the forces required to produce any … See more

Halley and Newton's initial stimulus
In January 1684, Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke had a conversation in which Hooke claimed to not only have derived the inverse-square law but also all the laws of planetary motion. Wren was … See more

It has been estimated that as many as 750 copies of the first edition were printed by the Royal Society, and "it is quite remarkable that so many copies of this small first edition are still in existence ... but it may be because the original Latin text was more … See more

• Atomism
• Elements of the Philosophy of Newton
• Isaac Newton's occult studies See more

Perhaps to reduce the risk of public misunderstanding, Newton included at the beginning of Book 3 (in the second (1713) and third (1726) editions) a section titled "Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy". In the four rules, as they came finally to stand in the 1726 edition, … See more

Beginnings of the Scientific Revolution
Nicolaus Copernicus had moved the Earth away from the center of the universe with the See more

Second edition, 1713
Two later editions were published by Newton: Newton had been urged to make a new edition of the Principia since the early 1690s, partly because copies of the first edition had already become very rare and expensive … See more