Contents
The Quaestiones contains notes from Newton's thorough reading of Descartes, Walter Charlton's translation of Gassendi into English, Galileo's Dialogue, Robert Boyle, Thomas Hobbes, Kenelm Digby, Joseph Glanvill and Henry More, and others. These were set down under 45 section headings which he used to organize his readings. They began with the nature of matter, place, time and motion and went on to the organization of the universe. This was followed by what would be classed today as properties of condensed matter, for example, rarity, fluidity, hardness etc. These were followed by questions on violent motion, light, colour, vision, and other sensations. The last part contains miscelleneous topics which presumably occurred to him later during his readings: "Of God", "Of ye Creation", "Of ye soule" and "Of Sleepe and Dreams &c". Some headings were followed by vast entries, which had to be continued elsewhere; others were blank. The earlier essays were organized into questions and outlines of possible experiments which roughly fit into modern notions of science, not the broader ancient notion of philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae
Famous quotes containing the word contents:
“Yet to speak of the whole world as metaphor
Is still to stick to the contents of the mind
And the desire to believe in a metaphor.
It is to stick to the nicer knowledge of
Belief, that what it believes in is not true.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Conversation ... is like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayed in it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)