Post by Marq Marquette

THE MOST IMPORTANT SCIENCE BOOK EVER, NEWTON'S "PRINCIPIA" PUBLISHED TODAY 339 YEARS AGO: One of mankind's most influential books ever written was officially published with maybe 500 copies available on July 6, 1687: "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" by 44-year-old genius, England's Sir Isaac Newton. The three, Latin volumes simply called "The Principia," are considered the most important work in the history of science, establishing the mathematical principles behind the concepts of planetary motion The Principia forms a mathematical foundation for the theory of classical mechanics. Among other achievements, it explains Kepler's laws of planetary motion; proves the Sun was at the center of the Solar System as Copernicus claimed a Century and a half before, and backed the science of Galileo 50 years earlier in formulating Newton's physical laws, and creating the field of calculus in the process. Newton studied and combined the great works before him to conceptualize and build a mathematical understanding of the known universe. He drew on the works of Nicolas Copernicus' sun-centered tome 144 years before, "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres," 1543, and Johannes Kepler's "A New Astronomy," 1609, (78-years earlier), and Galileo Galilei's "Dialogue on the Two Main World Systems," 1632, (55 years previous). The book: --defines the classic "laws of motion" in the Solar System and beyond; --shows how astronomical observations verify the inverse square law of gravitation ---defines the Sun as the center of the Solar System; --shows how the theory of gravity can account for irregularities in the motion of the Moon; --identifies the oblateness the Earth; --accounts For marine tides including phenomena of spring and neap tides by the perturbing gravitational attractions of the Sun and Moon --explains the precession of the equinoxes as an effect of the gravitational attraction of the Moon on the Earth's equatorial bulge; " in 2016, a first edition of "The Principia" sold for $3.7 million. Cambridge University Library, England, has Newton's own copy of the first edition. About 400 copies are known to exist, most in institutions.