Inertia and Scientific Law in Sixteenth-Century Commentaries on Lucretius

Abstract

When Newton was planning a second edition of thePrincipia, he considered adding to the work some passages indicating his belief that the theory of inertia was known in antiquity. He intended to include several selections, ninety verses in all, from Lucretius'sDe rerum naturato illustrate that point. In the end, however, he decided against incorporating the material in the new edition, probably because Richard Bentley, the master of Trinity College Cambridge, considered Epicurean thought, of which Lucretius's work is the chief example, to be an attack on religion. Bentley had written to Newton that he planned to base a refutation of Epicurean atheism on Newton'sPrincipiaand asked him for clarification of several points.