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Lot 69

NEWTON (ISAAC)
PEMBERTON (HENRY) A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy

8 June 2010, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £1,320 inc. premium

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NEWTON (ISAAC)

PEMBERTON (HENRY) A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy, first edition, 12 folding engraved plates, engraved head- and tail-pieces by John Pine after Grison, extensive pencil and ink notes in the margins of 12 pages concerning "Comets" (see below), 16-page list of subscribers at end, contemporary panelled calf, spine gilt, upper cover near detached [Babson 98], 4to, S. Palmer, 1728

Footnotes

In the margins of Chapter IV "of Comets" are a series of approximately 45 ink or pencil comments in a distinctive and legible near-contemporary hand. The tone of one is of disdain and outrage, hinting at a personal animosity towards Newton: "so then, tis He [Descartes], and sr. Isaac, found out first their curves", "No such proof Extant!", "Whose [Halley's] Inventions & Helps Sr. Isaac Newton ought not Father", "And is not all this conjecture?", "Here's a New Philosophy contrary to all Reason, and Experience!", "This Fool owns the Tail of a Comet to be smoak & vapours... But how could this heavy & gross vapour, or smoak fly upwards, and diametrically opposit to the the Sun... Is not there then some heavy, and dense fluid in the whole space of the Heavens? When it produces so sensible an effect to televate the Tails of Comets! And so, what is become, I pray you, of Sr. Isaac's Universal Vacuum?", "... this evidently destroys all Sr. Isaac's mathematical suppositions".

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