Abstract
Mathematical and sociological judgment concurs in the belief that the Principia shows how Newton developed pure science for a practical purpose. In particular, the way in which “the problem of ship design led Newton to the calculus of variations”1 would appear to be evidence of the social roots of scientific innovation in the seventeenth century. Newton’s statement is brief. He has been comparing different shapes or figures of solids of revolution as to their resistance, under certain given conditions, to being moved; then he says, only, “This proposition I conceive may be of use in the building of ships.”2
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Notes
Robert K. Merton: Science, Technology & Society in Seventeenth-Century England, Howard Fertig, New York, 1970; also Harper & Row, “Harper Torchbooks”), end of chapter VIII, pp. 181-182; this book was originally published as vol. IV, part 2 of Osiris: Studies on the History and Philosophy of Science, and on the History of Learning and Culture (ed. by George Sarton ), Bruges 1938.
Newton’s early manuscripts, as well as his published mathematical works, deal at large with geometry, analysis (algebra), number theory, and only in the smallest measure show even a relation to physical problems. See D. T. Whiteside’s edition (in progress) of The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton, Cambridge University Press, (1967), esp. vol. 1.
A. Rupert Hall: ‘Merton Revisited, or Science and Society in the Seventeenth Century’, History of Science: An Annual Review of Literature, Research and Teaching (ed. by A. C. Crombie and M. A. Hoskin), 2 (1963) 1–16, esp. p. 8.
All translations are based on Andrew Motte’s translation of the Principia, London 1729, reprinted in facsimile, with an introduction by I. B. Cohen, 2 vols., Dawsons of Pall Mall, London, 1968.
L. A. Pars: An Introduction to the Calculus of Variations, Heinemann, London, 1962, p. 15. Pars gives a more complete discussion of ‘Newton’s problem’ on pp. 285–298. He does not mention Newton’s sentence about ships.
por further details concerning this “advertisement,” and John Machin’s association with Motte’s translation of the Principia, see I. B. Cohen: ‘Pemberton’s Translation of Newton’s Principia, with Notes on Motte’s Translation’, Isis 54 (1963)
R. S. Greg. MS, f. 165; this MS is indexed in one of Gregory’s MSS in the library of the University of Edinburgh (MS C 34).
For a discussion of this copy, see my Introduction to Newton’s ‘Principia’ (cited in note 27 supra), pp. 203–205; and the article cited in note 37 infra.
See further, I. B. Cohen: ‘John Craige’s copy of Newton’s Principia: Newton’s Thoughts on Ship Design’, [in process], possibly to appear in Notes and Records of the Royal Society.
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© 1974 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
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Cohen, I.B. (1974). Isaac Newton, The Calculus of Variations, and the Design of Ships. In: Cohen, R.S., Stachel, J.J., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) For Dirk Struik. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2115-9_14
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