SOURCE: "Newton and the Scientific Revolution," in Queen's Quarterly, Vol. 95, No. 1, Spring, 1988, pp. 4-18.

Below, Westfall discusses Newton's role in the seventeenth-century world of science, noting that "the Principia was … a synthesis of the major themes of the scientific revolution. "

Isaac Newton published Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in July 1687. Seldom has the significance of a book been more immediately recognized. Indeed, its recognition began even before publication. In the spring of 1687, Fatio de Duillier, a young Swiss mathematician who would play a central role in Newton's life during the following six years, arrived in London. He found the learned community aflutter in expectation of the book which was destined, they told him, to remodel natural philosophy (Fatio 167-69). Similarly the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society carried a review of the Principia, which was in keeping with Fatio's report, shortly before the...