scholarly journals VIII. An experiment proposed for determining, by the aberration of the fixed stars, whether the rays of light, in pervading different media, change their velocity according to the law which results from Sir Isaac Newton's ideas concerning the cause of refraction; and for ascertaining their velocity in every medium whose refractive density is known.

1782 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 58-70 ◽  

Upon the supposition that the refraction of light is caused by a certain action of gross and sensible bodies upon it, Sir Isaac Newton has demonstrated, that the fines of incidence and refraction, when the rays pass out of one medium into another of different density, must always be in a constant ratio. This constancy of the ration of the sines is agreeable to an universal experience, and has been called the law of refraction.

This chapter presents George Boole's lecture on the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. The first subject of importance that engaged Newton's attention was the phenomena of prismatic colors. The results of his inquiries were communicated to the Royal Society in the year 1675, and afterwards published with most important additions in 1704. The production was entitled “Optics; or, a Treatise on the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light.” It is considered one of the most elaborate and original of his works, and carries on every page the traces of a powerful and comprehensive mind. Newton also discovered universal gravitation, which was announced to the world in 1687 through the publication of the “Principia, or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.” The object of the “Principia” is twofold: to demonstrate the law of planetary influence, and to apply that law to the purposes of calculation.


Author(s):  
Robert T. Hanlon

In his Principia (1687), Sir Isaac Newton laid out his discovery of the laws of motions and the law of universal gravitation. His historic journey involved a critical moment when, aided by discussions with Robert Hooke, he conquered the challenge of circular motion, e.g. one body circling another, by introducing the concept of force. The Principia was a tour-de-force demonstration of the intelligibility of the universe and ultimately broke physics away from philosophy. This work led directly to the concept of energy.


1768 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 156-169 ◽  

It is demonstrated by Sir Isaac Newton in the Principia , that it is not the Earth's center, but the common center of gravity of the Earth and Moon, that describes the ecliptic; and that the Earth and Moon revolve in similar ellipses, about their common center of gravity.


Each number of Notes and Records contains a short bibliography of books and articles dealing with the history of the Royal Society or its Fellows which have been noted since the publication of the last number. If Fellows would be good enough to draw the Editor’s attention to omissions these would be added to the list in the next issue. Books Badash, L. (Editor). Rutherford and Boltwood: letters on radioactivity. (Yale studies in the History of Sciences and Medicine, Vol. 4.) New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. $12.50. Begg, A. C. and Begg, N.C. James Cook and New Zealand . Wellington, N.Z.: A. R. Shearer, 1969. £ 2 5s. Berkeley, E. and Berkeley, Dorothy, S. Dr Alexander Gordon of Charles Town . University of North Carolina Press, 1969. $10.00. Bestcrman, T. Voltaire. London: Longmans, 1969. 8s. Bowden, D. K. Leibniz as a librarian and eighteenth-century librarians Germany . London: University College, 1969. 7s. 6d. Darwin, C. R. Questions about the breeding of animals . Facsim. repr. with an introduction by Sir Gavin Dc Beer. London: Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 1969. £1 15s. Davis, N. P. Lawrence and Openhimer . London: Cape, 1969. 2s. Dobson, J. John Hunter. Edinburgh & London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1969. £ 2 10s. Eales, N. B. The Cole library of early medicine and zoology . Catalogue of books and pamphlets. Part 1. 1472 to 1800. Oxford: Aldcn Press for the Library, University of Reading, 1969. £$ 5s. Edleston, J. (Editor). Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes . (1830.) (Cass Library of Science Classics. No. 12.) London: Frank Cass, 1969. £ 6 6s. Fothergill, B. Sir William Hamilton . Faber and Faber, 1969. £ 2 10s. French, R. K. Robert Whytt, the soul, and medicine . (Publications of the Wellcome Institute, No. 17.) London: Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, 1969. £ 2 5s.


The author enumerates the various steps by which Sir Isaac Newton, M c Laurin, and Laplace have carried the theory of the equilibrium of a revolving fluid very near to perfection, but he observes that they have generally supposed the spheroid to differ but little from a sphere; and he proceeds in the present paper to investigate the figure “by a direct analysis, in which no arbitrary supposition is admitted.” Mr. Ivory thinks it necessary to distinguish carefully two separate cases; the first is when the particles of the fluid do not attract one another, and the second when the particles are endued with attractive powers. These, he says, are plainly two cases that are essentially different from one another; for in the first, a stratum added induces no other change than an increase of pressure caused by the action of the accelerating forces at the surface; but in the second, besides the pressure, a new force is introduced, arising from the mutual attraction between the matter of the stratum and the fluid mass to which it is added.


Gendered Ecologies: New Materialist Interpretations of Women Writers in the Long Nineteenth Century is comprised of a diverse collection of essays featuring analyses of literary women writers, ecofeminism, feminist ecocriticism, and the value of the interrelationships that exist among human, nonhuman, and nonliving entities as part of the environs. The book presents a case for the often-disregarded literary women writers of the long nineteenth century, who were active contributors to the discourse of natural history—the diachronic study of participants as part of a vibrant community interconnected by matter. While they were not natural philosophers as in the cases of Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, and Michael Faraday among others, these women writers did engage in acute observations of materiality in space (e.g., subjects, objects, and abjects), reasoned about their findings, and encoded their discoveries of nature in their literary and artistic productions. The collection includes discussions of the works of influential literary women from the long nineteenth century—Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Caroline Norton, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Margaret Fuller, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Celia Thaxter, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Francis Wright, and Lydia Maria Child—whose multi-directional observations of animate and inanimate objects in the natural domain are based on self-made discoveries while interacting with the environs.


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