The Investigation of Difficult Things

'The essays are interesting, original and sound. This is the history of science at its best.' Observatory

• Part I. Mathematics and Astronomy to Newton: 1. Lunar velocity in the Ptolemaic tradition Bernard R. Goldstein; 2. The Sciametria from Kepler's Hipparchus N. M. Swerdlow; 3. Descartes, Pappus' problem, and the Cartesian parabola Henk Bos; 4. Honoré Fabry E. A. Fellman; Part II. Newton's Manuscripts: 5. Sotheby's Keyens and Yahuda P. E. Spargo: 6. De Scriptoribus chemicis Karin Figala et al; 7. Beyond the dating game Alan Shapiro; Part III. Newton's Principia: 8. The critical role of curvature in Newton's developing dynamics Bruce Brackenridge; 9. Newton and the absolutes A. Rupert Hall; 8. Newton's ontology Zev Bechler; 10. Newton's mathematical principles of natural philosophy Alan Gabbey; 11. The review of the first edition of Newton's Principia in the Acta Eruditorum Bernard Cohen; 12. Newton, Cotes David Fowler; Part IV. Newton and Eighteenth-Century Mathematics and Physics: 14. A study of spirals Ronald Cowing; 15. The fragmentation of the European mathematical community Lenore Feigenbaum; 16. Euler on action at a distance and fundamental equations in continuum mechanics Curtis Wilson; 17. St Peter and the rotation of the Earth Domenico Bertolini Meli; Part V. After Newton: 18. Why Stokes never wrote a treatise on optics Jed Buchwald; 19. Maxwell and Saturn's rings Peter M. Harman; 20. Poincare, topological dynamics Jeremy Gray.