Department of
History and Philosophy of Science
Newton's Regulae Philosophandi
Introduction
Regulae Structural Changes
Rule I
Rule II
Rule III
Rule IV
Latin
This portion of the HPS website is UNDER SERIOUS CONSTRUCTION!!
Currently, you can find here the English translation and original Latin text of Newton's Rules of Philosophizing, or Regulae Philosophandi. The Rules embody Newton's scientific method and have been the touchstone for philosophical and scientific reflection on method for the past three centuries. However, the Rules of Philosophizing were revised in every edition of Newton's The Natural Principles of Natural Philosophy, and only in this century have the texts of his revision become generally accesible.
There is currently no single source that details all of Newton's revision to the Rules. In this portion of the HPS website, researchers on Newtonian methodology and philosophy of science can find a synopsis of the existing literature on the rules, as well as the texts of all extant revision.
The revisions are now color-coded, with each color corresponding to a revision sequence. In the future, color-coding will be replaced with fascimiles of the original documents, but in translation. This will make the revisions easier to track across editions of the Principia. Until this is done, the unformatted text of the revision is now available.
