Framing Newton’s Principia: The Three Versions of Edmond Halley’s Lucretian Ode and Newton’s Reception of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura

Abstract

Readers of the first edition of Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) began their perusal in an elevated state of mind that did not result only from the work’s ground-breaking nature. Their receptivity was also shaped by a dedicatory ode written by the Principia’s first editor Edmond Halley in the style of the ancient Roman poet Lucretius. It was placed – after Newton’s own Praefatio ad lectorem – right before the main text. In the second and third edition (1713 and 1726), the ode was revised by its editors, significantly so by Richard Bentley and to a much lesser extent by Henry Pemberton. Its placement was changed to a less prominent position among the other paratexts. The different versions of the ode created different personae for the Principia’s author – and thus gave its readers different approaches to the scientific work – depending on its specific historical and natural philosophical context. This paper analyses the revisions in detail and discusses Newton’s own relationship to Lucretius’ De rerum natura in his writings throughout the timespan of the Principia’s first three publications. I argue that not only can the changes to the ode be explained by historical circumstance and through the influence of the Principia’s second editor Bentley – as is the focus of the study by Albury and one