In a footnote, Brewster attributes the anecdote to the astronomer Nevil Maskelyne who is said to have passed it on to Oxford professor Stephen Peter Rigaud Newton wrote extensively on the importance of Prophecy, and studied Alchemy, but there is little evidence that he took favourable notice of astrology. This has often been quoted in recent years as having been a statement specifically defending Astrology. Quote source: Reported as Newton's response, whenever Edmond Halley would say anything disrespectful of religion, by Sir David Brewster in The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (1831). In the year 1689 Mr Leibnitz, endeavouring to rival me, published a Demonstration of the same Proposition upon another supposition, but his Demonstration proved erroneous for want of skill in the method.” And this is the first instance upon record of any Proposition in the higher Geometry found out by the method in dispute. And in the winter between the years 16 this Proposition with the Demonstration was entered in the Register book of the R. At length in the winter between the years 16 I found the Proposition that by a centrifugal force reciprocally as the square of the distance a Planet must revolve in an Ellipsis about the center of the force placed in the lower umbilicus of the Ellipsis and with a radius drawn to that center describe areas proportional to the times. What Mr Hugens has published since about centrifugal forces I suppose he had before me. All this was in the two plague years of 16, for in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention, and minded Mathematicks and Philosophy more than at any time since. And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon, and having found out how to estimate the force with which globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere, from Kepler's Rule of the periodical times of the Planets being in a sesquialterate proportion of their distances from the centers of their orbs I deduced that the forces which keep the Planets in their Orbs must reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve: and thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, and found them answer pretty nearly. The same year in May I found the method of tangents of Gregory and Slusius, and in November had the direct method of Fluxions, and the next year in January had the Theory of Colours, and in May following I had entrance into the inverse method of Fluxions. “In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the method of approximating Series and the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. Modernized variants: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants. The phrase is most famous as an expression of Newton's but he was using a metaphor which in its earliest known form was attributed to Bernard of Chartres by John of Salisbury: Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants, and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. The quotation is 7-8 lines up from the bottom of the first page. More on this quote: Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) A facsimile of the original is online at The digital Library. “Isaac Newton Quotes: 1–30 of 202 Quotes.” Last modified August 5, 2021. Use MLA (Modern Language Association) style for the humanities, especially language and literature.
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