Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Geneva Edition ([1739–1742] 1822): Philosophical Transaction A Special Issue & the State-of the- Art

In this essay—based on previous research and publication by two of us (since 2012)—we propose an introduction of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Geneva Edition ([1739–1742] 1822) for the current Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society—A Special Issue, Newton, Principia, Newton Geneva Edition (17th–19th) and Modern Newtonian Mechanics: Heritage, Past–&–Present. This special issue is linked to the International two-day Symposium that, in September 2023, we organized at the University of Oxford, UK, to celebrate 200 years since its publication (1822–2022), and that featured our most significant recent findings. The programme included an examination of the importance of the Geneva Edition (GE) of Newton’s Principia. A key aspect of the discussions focused on the historical– scientific characteristics of this edition, including the history of physics and mathematics, as well as its typographical and epistemological attributes. Furthermore, the dissemination of Newtonianism throughout Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been explored. In this essay, we aim to refer to the main features of the GE and to the development of our research on this subject.