I'm always surprised when reading the notes of scientists and mathematicians working in previous centuries to see just how steeped they were in synthetic geometry. This was taken to an extreme in the case of the Principia, but one can't read Gibbs or Maxwell either without realizing that they felt Euclid in their bones in a way that few people do today, with possible exceptions for mathematicians trained under the Soviet system.
On a technical note, kudos to Cambridge for developing this beautiful platform for interacting with documents -- and for doing it without Flash.<p>On a personal note, everything I wrote during my college career suddenly seems a little less substantial...
Reminds me of an incident (I forget where I read about it) where Dirac is giving a lecture in Europe, someone asks a question & Dirac has to start working it out on the board - and Ehrenfest turns around and yells: Kids, now we can see how he does these things!, or something like that.
I wished they would show notebooks like these early in school: "Look, this is the pinnacle of human thought and it's full of corrected mistakes, scribbles, attempts and mnemonics".
Thanks to Cambridge for making this available to the general public, under a CC 3.0 license! The images are crystal clear, and easy to read. Props to Newton, as well :)
This is truly fascinating - a peek into the earliest thinking of arguably one of the greatest scientific minds who ever lived. It never ceases to amaze me that Newton, almost single-handedly and working all by himself pretty much laid the foundations for much of science for the next several hundred years. And in all likelihood, it all started with the thoughts he formulated while writing in this little notebook!
This reminds me of a blog I read by Stephen Wolfram discussing his viewing of Leibniz's notes.<p><a href="http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/05/dropping-in-on-gottfried-leibniz/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/05/dropping-in-on-gottfr...</a>
Page 31, <a href="http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04000/31" rel="nofollow">http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04000/31</a>, has errors in just about every numeric value it seems.<p>The page reads (from the manuscript image, interpreting the abbreviations) "[...] an arithmetic progression increasing from an unite by 1 composeth triangles by 2, composes squares by 3, composes pentangles by 4, hexangles &c. as 1.2.3.4.5.6. composes the triangles [...]".<p>In the "Transcription (normalised)" this is<p>"[...] an arithmet: progres: increasing from an unite by b=2 formula composeth triangles. by a=5/3, composes squares. by y=22/61, composes pentangles. by x=33/61, hexang: &c as 1 compose the triangles 2 &c likewise 3 compose 4 &c So 1.2.3.4.5.6. compose the quintangles [...].<p>It appears nearly all the 'MathML formulas' are wrong? There is also a textual transcription error "quintangles" which should read "triangles".<p>This is the only page I looked at. The "Transcription (diplomatic)" appears to bear the same errors. If this page is typical I hate to think how the hard to read or complex mathematical pages have been rendered in transcription.<p>Edit: I've just noticed that the erroneous MathML formulas are correct renderings of other expressions on the same page, this is probably a coding/markup error?
I see no straightforward way to download the entire notebook, only one image at a time.<p>It would be pleasant to be able to read the thing offline, it's frankly fascinating. Great post!
love this. slight nitpick, might be helpful for an intern or somebody to help clear up some of the {illeg} pieces that can't be read artificially.<p>edit: switched browsers, hover over {illeg} is understandable.