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D. T. Whiteside

Other affiliations: Lancaster University
Bio: D. T. Whiteside is an academic researcher from University of Cambridge. The author has contributed to research in topics: Kepler & History of science. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 19 publications receiving 675 citations. Previous affiliations of D. T. Whiteside include Lancaster University.

Papers
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Book
01 Jan 1967
TL;DR: The authors have published a complete edition of all the known mathematical papers of Isaac Newton, edited, annotated and translated by D T Whiteside, originally in Latin with accurate English translations which face the original text or in a footnote.
Abstract: This is a complete edition in eight volumes of all the known mathematical papers of Isaac Newton - edited, annotated and translated by D T Whiteside Papers originally in Latin are provided with accurate English translations which face the original text or in a footnote Some of the manuscript folios are reproduced in facsimile The commentary clarifies the peculiarities of seventeenth-century idiom and illuminates the contemporary significance of the text Notes are printed on the page-openings to which they refer, so far as possible, and give more specific help with points of idiom and mathematical usage, recast Newton's arguments into modern notation, and provide references to secondary works Paraphrases have been added to papers that are excessively abrupt For his work on this edition, Professor Whiteside was awarded both the Alexandre Koyre Medal of the International Academy of the History of Science and the George Sarton Medal of the American History of Science Society

308 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Newman's Principia as discussed by the authors is a difficult book to understand and it has been criticised for being difficult to understand by a limited number of experts, such as Dr William Derham, who pointed out that the logical structure of Newton's book is slipshod, its level of verbal fluency none too high, its arguments unnecessarily diffuse and repetitive, and its very content on occasion markedly irrelevant to its professed theme.
Abstract: On 18 July 1733, half a dozen years after Isaac Newton's death, Dr William Derham (a close friend during his last years) observed that \"S' Is[aac] ... abhorred all Contests.... And for this reason, mainly to avoid being baited by little Smatterers in Mathematicks, he told me, he designedly made his Principia abstruse; but yet so as to be understood by able Mathematicians, who he imagined, by comprehending his Demonstrations, would concurr with him in his Theory\".\" Forty years before, as Newton passed unseeingly by in the street at Cambridge, a nameless undergraduate had remarked sotto voce: \"There goes the man that writt a book that neither he nor anybody else understands\".\" Evidently, if it had been Newton's intention in the 1680s to make his mathematical world-view impossibly difficult for all but a tightly restricted elite to comprehend, in this one case at least he succeeded only too well. But was it? When we go behind such hearsay and anecdote, we will find that there is no trustworthy documentary evidence that Newton did deliberately contrive to render his Mathematical principles of natural philosophy more esoteric and impenetrable than he need have done. No one would deny that this ikon of scientific history is far from easy to read. Quite bluntly, the logical structure of Newton's book is slipshod, its level of verbal fluency none too high, its arguments unnecessarily diffuse and repetitive, and its very content on occasion markedly irrelevant to its professed theme: the theory of bodies in motion. But these faults are far from intentional and can largely be excused by the very rapidity with which the Principia was written-in little more than two years from the autumn of 16844and its author's distinct lack of talent for writing in a popular way. Ofsuch weaknesses no one was more conscious than Newton himself: indeed, we now know that in the early 1690s, soon after his book appeared, he reluctantly contemplated a grand revision of his work which he never found time and energy to irnplement.! In default we must suffer the crudities of the text as we have it in order to master the Principia's complex mathematical and scientific content. To attain this understanding there is no royal road which can bypass its conceptual difficulties, no novice's path which will soften its mathematical rigours. Newton himself tried to lighten the heavy load of preparatory learning for such acquaintances as Trinity College's guiding genius, Richard Bentley, who sought to achieve a limited understanding of merely the basic propositions of the Principia, but he succeeded none too well in his altruistic purpose. Having given Bentley the eminently sensible advice that \"At') first perusal of my Book it's enough if you understand y. Propositions WI\" some of') Demonvtrations we\" are easier than the rest ... [then] pass on to v: 3 Book & when you 'lee the design of that you may turn back to such Propositions as you shall have a desire to know\", Newton was then ineluctably led to compile for him in 1691 a formidable mathematical reading list\" which of necessity referred much more to recent works in geometrical and infinitesimal analysis than to traditional algebra and classical geometry. The Principia was-

73 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In a celebrated letter to Pierre Desmaizeaux in 1718, often quoted out of context, Newton asserted that "in the two plague years of 1665 & 1666 [when] I was in the prime of my age for invention & minded Mathematicks & Philosophy more then at any time since... I began to think of gravity extending to r orb of the Moon & having found out how to estimate the force w h W [a] globe revolving within a sphere pressing the surface of the sphere from Keplers rule of the periodical times of the Planets
Abstract: In a celebrated letter to Pierre Desmaizeaux in 1718,often quoted out of context,\" Newton asserted that \"in the two plague years of 1665 & 1666 [when] I was in the prime of my age for invention & minded Mathematicks & Philosophy more then at any time since ... I began to think of gravity extending to r orb of the Moon & having found out how to estimate the force w h W [a] globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere from Keplers 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 w keep the Planets in their Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about wch they revolve: & thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth\". Despite its several inconsistencies this autobiographical reminiscence has, since its first publication in 1888, come to be accepted as reasonably authentic. But if this account is substantially correct, why-to pose Cajori's famous query\" once more-did Newton delay almost twenty years before communicating to others this crucial breakthrough to the dynamical synthesis which he propounded in his magisterial Principia mathematica? and what astronomical researches did he pursue during those two lost decades? To the explorer of its prehistory the 500 or so pages of tightly compressed mathematical argument which forms the Principia's text-whether in the editio princeps of 1687 or in any of the eighty or more later reissues in its original Latin and the half dozen languages into which it has been translated-offer few footholds into the past. Several names (those of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Wren, Huygens, Halley, Hooke and Flamsteed, notably) are introduced once or twice each, and that is effectively all. For more than a century and a half now it has been a main task of such Newtonian scholars as Stephen Rigaud, Joseph Edleston and Rouse Ball' to penetrate the sheer surface which it monolithically presents and to underpin it; to set the Principia squarely in its historical context and, while comprehending its patterns ofreasoning, also to assess their originality in the light of the mass of contemporary knowledge in the fields of mechanics, optics and astronomy: an intellectual heritage on which, we now know, Newton in fact drew heavily. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century in particular, with the opening up of the still inadequately-mined treasure of the Portsmouth Collection of Newton's private papers, searching analyses of historical event and motive which were built upon a complex of hitherto inaccessible documents became possible for the first time. In preface to the 1888 Catalogue of these papers John Couch Adams showed off some of the riches of the unpublished astronomical manuscripts, especially those on lunar theory and atmospheric refraction.\" and the same year Glaisher drew on material from the same source for a bicentenary address on the Principia which included the now famous hypothesis that \"the real reason why Newton laid aside his computations on the

46 citations


Cited by
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BookDOI
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: This chapter discusses computing roadmaps and Connected Components of Algebraic Sets, as well as the "complexity of Basic Algorithms" and "cylindrical Decomposition Algorithm".
Abstract: Algebraically Closed Fields- Real Closed Fields- Semi-Algebraic Sets- Algebra- Decomposition of Semi-Algebraic Sets- Elements of Topology- Quantitative Semi-algebraic Geometry- Complexity of Basic Algorithms- Cauchy Index and Applications- Real Roots- Cylindrical Decomposition Algorithm- Polynomial System Solving- Existential Theory of the Reals- Quantifier Elimination- Computing Roadmaps and Connected Components of Algebraic Sets- Computing Roadmaps and Connected Components of Semi-algebraic Sets

1,407 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
25 Oct 2013-Science
TL;DR: Analysis of 17.9 million research articles across five decades of the Web of Science suggests that science follows a nearly universal pattern: the highest-impact science is primarily grounded in exceptionally conventional combinations of prior work yet simultaneously features an intrusion of unusual combinations.
Abstract: Novelty is an essential feature of creative ideas, yet the building blocks of new ideas are often embodied in existing knowledge. From this perspective, balancing atypical knowledge with conventional knowledge may be critical to the link between innovativeness and impact. Our analysis of 17.9 million papers spanning all scientific fields suggests that science follows a nearly universal pattern: The highest-impact science is primarily grounded in exceptionally conventional combinations of prior work yet simultaneously features an intrusion of unusual combinations. Papers of this type were twice as likely to be highly cited works. Novel combinations of prior work are rare, yet teams are 37.7% more likely than solo authors to insert novel combinations into familiar knowledge domains.

791 citations

Book
24 Feb 1984
TL;DR: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change as mentioned in this paper provides a stimulating survey of the communications revolution of the fifteenth century, summarizing the initial changes, and introducing the establishment of printing shops, it considers how printing effected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.
Abstract: What difference did printing make? Although the importance of the advent of printing for the Western world has long been recognized, it was Elizabeth Eisenstein in her monumental, two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, who provided the first full-scale treatment of the subject. This illustrated and abridged edition provides a stimulating survey of the communications revolution of the fifteenth century. After summarizing the initial changes, and introducing the establishment of printing shops, it considers how printing effected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. First Edition Hb (1984) 0-521-25858-8 First Edition Pb (1984) 0-521-27735-3

626 citations

MonographDOI
17 Jun 1999
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the mental measurement nexus, the logic of quantification, safety in numbers, break-out from the classical paradigm, made to measure, and the revolution "that never happened".
Abstract: 1. Trusting number, forsaking measure 2. The mental measurement nexus 3. The logic of quantification 4. Safety in numbers 5. Break-out from the classical paradigm 6. Beyond measure 7. Made to measure 8. The revolution 'that never happened'.

472 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A review of four major approaches to the study of science, including historical accounts of scientific discoveries, laboratory experiments with nonscientists working on tasks related to scientific discovery, direct observation of ongoing scientific laboratories, and computational modeling of scientific discovery processes, can be found in this paper.
Abstract: This review integrates 4 major approaches to the study of science—histo rical accounts of scientific discoveries, psychological experiments with nonscientists working on tasks related to scientific discoveries, direct observation of ongoing scientific laboratories, and computational modeling of scientific discovery processes—by viewing them through the lens of the theory of human problem solving. The authors provide a brief justification for the study of scientific discovery, a summary of the major approaches, and criteria for comparing and contrasting them. Then, they apply these criteria to the different approaches and indicate their complementarities. Finally, they provide several examples of convergent principles of the process of scientific discovery. The central thesis of this article is that although research on scientific discovery has taken many different paths, these paths show remarkable convergence on key aspects of the discovery processes, allowing one to aspire to a general theory of scientific discovery. This convergence is often obscured by the disparate cultures, research methodologies, and theoretical foundations of the various disciplines that study scientific discovery, including history and sociology as well as those within the cognitive sciences (e.g., psychology, philosophy, and artificial intelligence). Despite these disciplinary differences, common concepts and terminology can express the central ideas and findings about scientific discovery from the various disciplines, treating discovery as a particular species of human problem solving. Moreover, we may be able to use these concepts and this vocabulary over an even broader domain to converge toward a common account of discovery in many areas of human endeavor: practical, scientific, and artistic, occurring both in everyday life and in specialized technical and professional domains. The doing of science has long attracted the attention of philosophers, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists. More recently, psychologists also have begun to turn their attention to the phenomena of scientific thinking, and there is now a large and rapidly growing literature on the psychology of science. (A good description of the field in its infancy can be found in Tweney, Doherty, & Mynatt, 1981, and a recent summary of topics and findings from investigations of the developmental, personality, cognitive, and social psychology of science can be found in Feist & Gorman, 1998). Our review links four major approaches to the study of science—historical accounts of scientific discoveries, laboratory experiments with nonscientists working on tasks related to scientific discoveries, direct observation of ongoing scientific laboratories, and computational modeling of scientific discovery processes—by

317 citations