Wigelsworth, Jeffrey Robert (Author)
Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
Volume: 61
Issue: 4
Pages: 519-523
In his The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (1728), French intellectual Bernard de Fontenelle commented that "it requir'd some time before the Publick could understand" Newton's mathematical masterpiece the Principia when the first edition was published in 1687. The book Newton had written was filled "with a great deal of learning," but "the author has been vary sparing of his Words" and "Great Mathematicians were oblig'd to study it with care; the middling Ones did not attempt it."1 While Fontenelle was not the first to view the Principia as an exceedingly difficult book to read, his assessment did contribute to the near mythological status of the impenetrable contents of a book that became more admired than it was read, let alone understood. Nineteenth-century biographers of Newton went further in their characterization of the Principia. J. B. Biot claimed that "when it was first published, not more than two or three among Newton's contemporaries were capable of understanding it."2 Augustus De Morgan suggested that it "would be difficult to name a dozen men in Europe of whom, at the appearance of the Principia, it can be proved that they both read and understood the work."3 Given these early assessments, it is not surprising that the historical process of transforming the ideas within Newton's mind to the printed page and then into the collective consciousness of the age continues to serve as the inspiration for studies of science publishing and the history of the book. It is within this conversation that Laura Miller positions her book Reading Popular Newtonianism: Print, the Principia, and the Dissemination of Newtonian Science (Charlottesville, 2018).
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