• DOI:10.1177/007327530904700301
Corpus ID: 148025397

Newton on the Beach: The Information Order of Principia Mathematica

@article{Schaffer2009NewtonOT,
  title={Newton on the Beach: The Information Order of Principia Mathematica},
  author={S. Schaffer},
  journal={History of Science},
  year={2009},
  volume={47},
  pages={243 - 276}
}

• S. Schaffer
• Published 2009
• History
• History of Science

It is one of the most celebrated of Isaac Newton’s obiter dicta. Like many such, its provenance is hazy. The literary reference may well be to a passage from John Milton’s great redemptive poem Paradise regained (1671) where, in dialogue with Satan, Christ praises divine illumination above pagan learning: “who reads / Incessantly, and to his reading brings not / A spirit and judgment equal or superior, / ... Uncertain and unsettled still remains, / Deep verst in books, and shallow in himself… Expand

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