Kepler's area law in the \textit{Principia}: filling in some details in Newton's proof of Proposition 1.

DOI10.1016/S0315-0860(02)00027-7zbMATH Open1038.01010arXivmath/0112048MaRDI QIDQ1421933FDOQ1421933

Authors: Michael Nauenberg 

Publication date: 3 February 2004

Published in: Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: During the past 25 years there has been a controversy regarding the adequacy of Newton's proof of Prop. 1 in Book 1 of the {it Principia}. This proposition is of central importance because its proof of Kepler's area law allowed Newton to introduce a geometric measure for time to solve problems in orbital dynamics in the {it Principia}. It is shown here that the critics of Prop. 1 have misunderstood Newton's fundamental limit argument by neglecting to consider the justification for this limit which he gave in Lemma 3. We clarify the proof of Prop. 1 by filling in some details left out by Newton which show that his proof of this proposition was adequate and well grounded.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0112048

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zbMATH Keywords

Newton's PrincipiaKepler's area law

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 17th century (01A45)

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