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St. John's Review Volume 51 Number 2 The St. John’s Review Volume 51, number 2 (2009) Editor Pamela Kraus Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Barbara McClay The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Michael Dink, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to the Review , St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404- 2800. Back issues are available, at $5 per issue, from the St. John’s College Bookstore. ©2009 St. John’s College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing and Printing The St. John’s Public Relations Office and the St. John’s College Print Shop 2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 3 Contents Essay The Secret Art of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica , Part Two...................................5 Judith Seeger “The Things of Friends Are Common”........................37 Christopher B. Nelson Review “My Subject Is Passion”...............................................45 Eva Brann’s Feeling Our Feelings: What Philosophers Think and People Know Ronald Mawby 4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 5 The Secret Art of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Part Two Judith Seeger 4. The Second Hidden Text: The Great Work of Nature Tis true without lying, certain & most true. That w ch is below is like that w ch is above & that wch is above is like y t wch is below to do y e miracles of one only thing And as all things have been & arose from one by ye mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nourse. The father of all perfection in ye whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth. Separate thou y e earth from y e fire, y e subtile from the gross sweetly w th great indoustry. It ascends from y e earth to y e heaven & again it descends to ye earth & receives ye force of things superior & inferior. By this means you shall have y e glory of y e whole world & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Judith Seeger is a tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis. This essay is published in two parts. Part one appeared in The St. John’s Review , volume 51, number 1. All bibliographical references appeared at the end of part 1. Endnotes are numbered continuously through both parts 6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW SEEGER 7 Its force is above all force. ffor it vanquishes every broader than near the head of the comet. subtile thing & penetrates every solid thing. Moreover, it seems reasonable that by this So was y e world created . (“Tabula rarefaction the vapor—continually dilated—is Smaragdina,” translated by Isaac Newton) 37 finally diffused and scattered throughout the whole heavens, and then is by degrees attracted toward The General Scholium with which the second and third the planets by its gravity and mixed with their editions of the Principia end is so powerful that it may atmospheres. For just as the seas are absolutely obscure the discussion of comets that precedes it. That necessary for the constitution of this earth, so that discussion, however, is of crucial importance. The main text vapors may be abundantly enough aroused from of all three editions of the Principia culminates with them by the heat of the sun, which vapors either— Newton’s demonstration that the formerly fear-inspiring being gathered into clouds—fall in rains and comets, rather than being supernatural signs of God’s wrath, irrigate and nourish the whole earth for the propa - are natural bodies that obey the same laws as the planets. This gation of vegetables, or—being condensed in the accomplishment is one of the triumphs of the book. But cold peaks of mountains (as some philosophize Newton did not stop there. The wide-ranging disquisition on with good reason)—run down into springs and comets at the end of Book 3—consisting primarily of celestial rivers; so for the conservation of the seas and observations, mathematical calculations, and inferences fluids on the planets, comets seem to be required, drawn from Newton’s optical studies—includes, as well, so that from the condensation of their exhalations assertions about the active role comets play in the universe, in and vapors, there can be a continual supply and passages that stand out in the context of mathematical calcu - renewal of whatever liquid is consumed by lations and demonstrations. vegetation and putrefaction and converted into dry Consider, for example, the remarks that follow earth. For all vegetables grow entirely from fluids Proposition 41 of Book 3 in all three editions. At this point, and afterward, in great part, change into dry earth Newton has already established that the bodies of comets are by putrefaction, and slime is continually deposited “solid, compact, fixed, and durable, like the bodies of from putrefied liquids. Hence the bulk of dry earth planets” (918), and that their tails are composed of extremely is increased from day to day, and fluids—if they thin vapor which the head or nucleus of the comet emits did not have an outside source of increase—would under the influence of the fierce heat of the sun. Then, have to decrease continually and finally to fail. surprisingly (for what does this have to do with the mathe - Further, I suspect that that spirit which is the matical determination of celestial motion ruled by universal smallest but most subtle and most excellent part of gravitation?), he states that this extremely thin vapor is our air, and which is required for the life of all essential to the replenishment both of water on earth and of things, comes chiefly from comets. (926) a more subtle spirit required for life. The passage continues: This is an allegory of circulation as the alchemists understood For vapor in those very free spaces becomes it, in which the spirit provided by the tails of comets is continually rarefied and dilated. For this reason it analogous to the philosophers’ mercury—whose many names happens that every tail at its upper extremity is included dew of heaven, oriental water, celestial water, our 8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW SEEGER 9 balm, our honey, May dew, silver rain—the spiritual agent, it was his conjecture (he would affirm nothing) whose properties were activated, according to Basil that there was a <sort of> revolution in the Valentine, by expulsion from its habitat in the form of airy heavenly bodies that the vapours & light gathered vapors, and whose descent was perceived as heavenly <emitted> by the sun <which had their sediment condensation falling to nourish the earth, which would perish as water & other matter had> gathered without it (Nicholl, 92-3). 38 Newton is not here speaking of themselves by degrees into a body <& attracted circulatory motion within a single immovable plane, which he more matter from the planets> & at last made a has shown in Proposition 1 of Book 1 to be the motion of secondary planett (viz. one of those that go round bodies driven in orbits under the influence of centripetal another planet) & then by gathering <to them> force. He is describing, rather, a continual churning within & attracting more matter became a primary the universe, the manifestation of nature as a circulatory planet, & then by increasing still became a comet worker, to borrow his characterization of it in 1675. 39 This is wch after certain revolutions & by coming nearer an image of earth as retort, inasmuch as comets supply both & nearer the sun, had all its volatile parts the fluids and the subtle spirit required for the development condensed & became a matter fit to recruit <& of life itself. replenish> the sun (w ch must waste by the constant The final book of the first edition of the Principia ends heat & light it emitted), as a fagot put into abruptly with Proposition 42. But the second edition <would> this fire if put into it (wee were sitting continues. In addition to incorporating more observations by the <a wood> fire) & and that that would and calculations of the paths of comets, Newton in the 1713 probably be the effect of the comet in 1680 sooner edition extends the image of renewal nourished by comets to or later . (Iliffe, 1: 165). the fixed stars themselves, writing, “So also fixed stars, which Newton added that when this collision occurred, after are exhausted bit by bit in the exhalation of light and vapors, perhaps five or six more revolutions, it would “so much can be renewed by comets falling into them and then, kindled increase the heat of the sun that <this earth would be burnt by their new nourishment, can be taken for new stars. Of this &> no animals in this earth could live” (Iliffe, 1: 165). sort are those fixed stars that appear all of a sudden, and that Indeed, he seemed to Conduitt “to be very clearly of opinion” at first shine with maximum brilliance and subsequently that such a collision, and subsequent “repeopling” by the disappear little by little” (937). This phenomenon, he Creator had happened at least once already, observing, first, comments, had been noted by such reliable observers as “that the inhabitants of this earth were of a short date,” partly Cornelius Gemma, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler’s pupils.
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