Glossary

Forty-four terms, from "action at a distance" to "Yahuda manuscripts."

Absolute space and time

Newton’s claim, in the Principia’s Scholium to the Definitions, that space and time exist independently of the bodies in them — “absolute, true, and mathematical” — against Leibniz’s relational view. Einstein’s relativity later replaced this picture.

Action at a distance

A force acting across empty space with no mechanical contact — gravity, in the Principia. Cartesians like Huygens found it occult and unacceptable; Newton’s famous “I feign no hypotheses” was his refusal to explain how it worked.

Alchemy

Newton’s decades-long experimental program in transmutation and the philosopher’s stone, recorded in hundreds of thousands of words of manuscript, some in cipher. Once an embarrassment to his Victorian biographers; now studied seriously as part of his natural philosophy.

Annus mirabilis

The “marvelous year” — 1665–66, when plague closed Cambridge and Newton, working alone at Woolsthorpe, developed fluxions, began gravitation theory, and performed the prism experiments.

Arianism

The early-Christian doctrine (after Arius) denying the full divinity of Christ — the label historians use for Newton’s private, anti-Trinitarian theology. He kept it secret; to publish it would have cost him his Cambridge fellowship.

Black year (1693)

Newton’s 1693 breakdown: insomnia, paranoia, and the anguished letters to Pepys and Locke. The cause is debated — overwork, mercury poisoning from alchemical experiments, the rupture with Fatio, or all three.

Calculus priority dispute

The decades-long fight over who invented the calculus. Leibniz published first (1684); Newton had worked earlier but published almost nothing. The Royal Society’s Commercium Epistolicum (1712) ruled for Newton; modern scholarship credits independent invention by both.

Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms

Newton’s posthumous The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728): an attempt to redate ancient history using astronomy, shortening conventional chronologies by centuries. Ingenious in method, mostly wrong in conclusion.

Commercium Epistolicum

The Royal Society’s 1712 report on the calculus dispute — nominally a committee finding, largely drafted by Newton himself — declaring Newton the first inventor. A landmark in the history of scientific priority fights, and of stacking the jury.

Corpuscular theory of light

Newton’s view that light consists of tiny particles (corpuscles) — argued in the Opticks against Hooke’s and Huygens’ wave theories. The 19th century vindicated waves; the 20th (photons) made the question subtler than either side imagined.

De Motu

De Motu Corporum in Gyrum (“On the motion of bodies in an orbit,” 1684): the short treatise Newton wrote for Halley, proving inverse-square attraction yields Keplerian ellipses — the seed of the Principia.

Experimentum crucis

The “crucial experiment”: Newton’s two-prism demonstration that white light is a mixture of colors, each refracted differently — because the second prism could not further split a single color. The centerpiece of his 1672 optics paper.

Fluxions

Newton’s name for the calculus: variable quantities (“fluents”) and their rates of change (“fluxions”). Developed by the late 1660s; De analysi (1669) circulated privately; the full Method of Fluxions wasn’t published until 1736, after his death.

FRS

Fellow of the Royal Society. Newton was elected in 1672 after presenting his reflecting telescope; he later ruled the Society as its president (1703–1727).

General Scholium

The famous essay appended to the Principia’s second edition (1713): “Hypotheses non fingo” (“I feign no hypotheses”), the defense of deriving laws from phenomena, and the natural-theological claim that the solar system’s beauty points to “an intelligent and powerful Being.”

Great Recoinage

The 1696–98 replacement of England’s clipped, worn silver coinage — the vast logistical operation Newton administered as Warden of the Mint, including a network of country mints.

Hermetic tradition

The body of mystical-philosophical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, influential on Renaissance alchemy and on Newton’s own alchemical reading. Keynes’s famous line — Newton as “the last of the magicians” — points here.

Inverse-square law

The law that gravitational (and electrical) attraction falls off with the square of the distance. Hooke asserted it; Newton proved its consequences — but only Newton showed it explains Kepler’s laws.

Julian calendar

The calendar in use in England throughout Newton’s lifetime. England adopted the Gregorian reform only in 1752. Newton’s 25 December 1642 birth was 4 January 1643 on the continent.

Keynes collection

The Newton alchemical and theological manuscripts bought by economist John Maynard Keynes at the 1936 Sotheby sale of Newton’s papers — now at King’s College, Cambridge — which forced the 20th century to confront the “magician” Newton.

Knighthood

Newton was knighted by Queen Anne at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 16 April 1705 — the first knighthood awarded for scientific achievement.

“Last of the magicians”

John Maynard Keynes’s verdict in his 1946 lecture “Newton, the Man”: “Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.” The single most quoted modern judgment on Newton.

Lucasian Professor

The Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge, founded 1663. Newton held it 1669–1701 (succeeding Barrow, succeeded by Whiston); the chair later held by Dirac and Hawking.

Master of the Mint

The lucrative chief office of the Royal Mint, which Newton held from 1699 until his death. (The Wardenship of 1696 was the junior post; Newton made it formidable.)

Mechanical philosophy

The 17th-century program — Descartes, Boyle, Hooke — of explaining nature by matter in motion, contact action, and no occult forces. Newton’s gravity, acting at a distance, violated its rules; his success helped end its reign.

Natural philosophy

What Newton and his contemporaries called science: the philosophical study of nature, before the 19th century split it into “physics,” “chemistry,” and the rest. Newton’s chair was in mathematics; his subject was nature.

Newton Project

The scholarly edition of Newton’s writings (newtonproject.ox.ac.uk), based at Oxford — the essential source for transcriptions of his manuscripts, papers, and correspondence.

Observations upon the Prophecies

Newton’s posthumous Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733): biblical prophecy treated as a code to be deciphered with scientific rigor.

Old Style / New Style

“Old Style” (O.S.): dates as written in England before 1752 — Julian calendar, year beginning 25 March. “New Style” (N.S.): the modern Gregorian reckoning. Newton’s 5 February 1675 (O.S.) letter to Hooke is 15 February 1676 (N.S.).

Opticks Queries

The speculative questions closing the Opticks — sixteen in 1704, thirty-one by 1717 — where Newton mused about aether, forces, transmutation, and the nature of light. Query 31 is the most famous.

Philosophical Transactions

The Royal Society’s journal (from 1665), where Newton’s 1672 optics paper appeared — and where the optics wars of the 1670s were fought.

Portsmouth collection

The bulk of Newton’s manuscripts, given to Cambridge University Library by the Earl of Portsmouth in 1872 and catalogued in 1888 — the foundation of modern Newton scholarship.

Principia

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687): the laws of motion, universal gravitation, and their application to planets, comets, tides, and the Earth. Second edition 1713 (Cotes), third 1726.

Reflecting telescope

Newton’s 1668 invention: a telescope using a mirror instead of a lens, avoiding chromatic aberration. The one he presented to the Royal Society in 1672 made his name — and got him elected FRS.

Roubiliac statue

Louis-François Roubiliac’s 1755 marble statue of Newton, in Trinity College chapel, Cambridge — the iconic image of the sage with prism, one of the most reproduced Newton images ever made.

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London (founded 1660): Newton’s publisher, prize-giver, battleground, and — from 1703 — his personal fiefdom as president.

Rules of Reasoning

The four methodological rules opening Book III of the Principia: parsimony in causes, same causes for same effects, universal qualities, and treating well-confirmed inductions as true until exceptions appear. Rule I is quoted on the sayings page.

“Shoulders of giants”

Newton’s 1676 line to Hooke — “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants” — deploying a metaphor that goes back to Bernard of Chartres (via John of Salisbury, 1159). Whether it was humility or a jab at the short, stooped Hooke is debated.

South Sea Bubble

The 1720 financial crash in which Newton lost heavily — commonly put around £20,000, a large fortune. The anecdote about him saying he could “calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people” is unverified; the losses are documented.

Subsizar

The poor scholar’s place Newton held when he entered Trinity in 1661 — working his way through college by serving wealthier students.

Trinity College, Cambridge

Newton’s college: entered 1661, fellow 1667, Lucasian Professor 1669–1701. His rooms, his statue, and much of his papers remain there.

Two Notable Corruptions

Newton’s An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture (published 1754): textual criticism arguing that two key Trinity proof-texts (1 John 5:7; 1 Timothy 3:16) were late insertions — the scholarly side of his anti-Trinitarianism.

Warden of the Mint

The post Newton took in 1696 (through Charles Montagu’s patronage), moving him to London. He turned the junior office into a criminal-investigation bureau, personally prosecuting counterfeiters like William Chaloner.

Westminster Abbey monument

Newton’s tomb in Westminster Abbey: state funeral in 1727, with Rysbrack’s monument showing him reclining on books beside a celestial globe — the visual capstone of the Newton myth.

William Chaloner

The forger and confidence man Newton pursued as Warden of the Mint; convicted on Newton’s evidence and hanged in March 1699. The case shows Newton the ruthless administrator.

Woolsthorpe Manor

Newton’s birthplace at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire — the farmhouse (now National Trust) where the plague-year work was done and where, per Stukeley, the apple fell.

Yahuda manuscripts

Newton’s theological manuscripts bought by the orientalist Abraham Yahuda at the 1936 sale — now at the National Library of Israel — the other half (with the Keynes collection) of the private Newton the 20th century rediscovered.

Apple story

The anecdote Newton told William Stukeley: watching an apple fall in the Woolsthorpe orchard set him wondering whether the same force reached to the Moon. Genuine as an anecdote (Stukeley, 1752); the “apple hit his head” version is a later cartoon.

Source notes

• Definitions follow standard scholarly usage (Westfall, Never at Rest; the Newton Project’s editorial materials).
• “Last of the magicians”: Keynes, “Newton, the Man” (1946), written for the Royal Society’s Newton tercentenary.
• The £20,000 South Sea loss figure: commonly cited from Newton’s documented holdings; given here as approximate.