NEWTON, Isaac.

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A Treatise of the System of the World. Translated into English. First edition in English of Newton's original draft of the final book of the Principia, the only portion of that draft to be published. The Treatise was consciously written "in a popular method" (p. iii) and reflects his early conceptions of the Newtonian universe. Newton's original draft of the Principia was completed in autumn 1685 and structured as a two-book text. Book I was primarily mathematical, while Book II was a more accessible prose analysis of the Newtonian universe under these new mathematical principles. While this version of the Principia was almost entirely focussed on gravitation, Newton's instincts quickly compelled him to rework the text into a complete system of classical mechanics. During this revision, Book II was comprehensively re-written to form what we now have as the final book of the published work. While Newton abandoned the accessible prose of the earlier rendition, the content "did not differ substantially" between the two versions (Westfall, p. 459). This posthumous edition publishes and translates Newton's original Book II, which contains several prescient suggestions, pointing towards the possibility of terrestrial tidal effects - not discovered until 1919 - and towards the existence of Uranus - first seen by Herschel in 1781. The Treatise was first published the same year in Latin as De Mundi Systemate, as agreed by Newton when bequeathing his papers to his son-in-law John Condu

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