1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910823825203321

Autore

Buchwald Jed Z

Titolo

Newton and the origin of civilization / / Jed Z. Buchwald & Mordechai Feingold

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, : Princeton University Press, c2013

ISBN

1-283-85127-X

1-4008-4518-1

Edizione

[Course Book]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (545 p.)

Altri autori (Persone)

FeingoldMordechai

Disciplina

530.092

Soggetti

Scientists - England

Philosophers - England

Chronology, Historical - History - 17th century

Civilization, Ancient - Philosophy

Public opinion - Europe - History - 17th century

Europe Intellectual life 17th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Troubled Senses -- Troubled Numbers -- Erudition and Chronology in Seventeenth-Century England -- Isaac Newton on Prophecies and Idolatry -- Aberrant Numbers : The Propagation of Mankind before and after the Deluge -- Newtonian History -- Text and Testimony -- Interpreting Words -- Publication and Reaction -- The War on Newton in England -- The War on Newton in France -- The Demise of Chronology -- Evidence and History -- Appendix A: Signs, Conventions, Dating, and Definitions -- Appendix B: Newton's Computational Methods -- Appendix C: Commented Extracts from Newton's MS Calculations -- Appendix D: Placing Colures on the Original Star Globe -- Appendix E: Hesiod, Thales, and Stellar Risings and Settings.

Sommario/riassunto

Isaac Newton's Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published in 1728, one year after the great man's death, unleashed a storm of controversy. And for good reason. The book presents a drastically revised timeline for ancient civilizations, contracting Greek history by five hundred years and Egypt's by a millennium. Newton and the Origin



of Civilization tells the story of how one of the most celebrated figures in the history of mathematics, optics, and mechanics came to apply his unique ways of thinking to problems of history, theology, and mythology, and of how his radical ideas produced an uproar that reverberated in Europe's learned circles throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold reveal the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics. It was during Newton's earliest years at Cambridge that he developed the core of his singular method for generating and working with trustworthy knowledge, which he applied to his study of the past with the same rigor he brought to his work in physics and mathematics. Drawing extensively on Newton's unpublished papers and a host of other primary sources, Buchwald and Feingold reconcile Isaac Newton the rational scientist with Newton the natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian, and chronologist of ancient history.