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

DOI10.1016/S0315-0860(02)00027-7MaRDI QIDQ1421933zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Michael Nauenberg

Publication date 3 February 2004

Published in Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

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

zbMATH Keywords

Kepler's area lawNewton's Principia

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

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

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.

Review text

Proposition 1 in Book 1 of the \textit{Principia} 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. The adequacy of Newton's proof of this Prop. 1 has been regarded controversial during the past 30 years. The author shows that the critics have misunderstood Newton's continuum limit argument by neglecting to consider the justification which he gave in Lemma~3. By filling in some details left out by Newton, the author clarifies now that Newton's proof was adequate and well-grounded. It is shown that Newton discovered Prop. 1 precisely already in 1679 because at this time he turned to a nontraditional view of orbital motion which had been suggested to him by Robert Hooke after a lengthy correspondence. This Prop. 1 appeared for the first time in a short manuscript \textit{De Motu} that Newton had sent in 1684 to Halley.

Recommendations

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Cited in

(17)

• Newton's mature dynamics and the Principia: A simplified solution to the Kepler problem
• The mathematics of the Area Law: Kepler's successful proof in \textit{Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae} (1621)
• Robert Hooke's seminal contribution to orbital dynamics
• Newton's argument for Proposition 1 of the \textit{Principia}
• The early application of the calculus to the inverse square force problem
• A dynamic extremum seeking scheme for three-player attack-defense with unknown gradient
• Kepler's angular measures of uniformity: how it provided a potential proof of his Third Law
• Consistency under sampling of exponential random graph models
• The mathematical form of measurement and the argument for Proposition I in Newton's \textit{Principia}
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 797209 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1421054 (Why is no real title available?)
• Mathematical models in Newton'sPrincipia: A new view of the ‘Newtonian Style’
• The integrability of ovals: Newton's Lemma 28 and its counterexamples
• From a central force to Kepler’s area law: student difficulties and preferences with two derivations
• Newton's interpretation of Newton's second law
• The argument(s) for universal gravitation
• Newton's attempt to construct a unitary view of mathematics

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