Newton's System of the World (Illustrated)

Introduction from The System of the World: It was the ancient opinion of not a few, in the earliest ages of philosophy, that the fixed stars stood immoveable in the highest parts of the world; that, under the fixed stars the planets were carried about the sun; that the earth, us one of the planets, described an annual course about the sun, while by a diurnal motion it was in the mean time revolved about its own axis; and that the sun, as the common fire which served to warm the whole, was fixed in the centre of the universe. This was the philosophy taught of old by Philolaus, Aristarchus of Samos, Plato in his riper years, and the whole sect of the Pythagoreans; and this was the judgment of Anaximander, more ancient than any of them; and of that wise king of the Romans, Numa Pompilius, who, as a symbol of the figure of the world with the sun in the centre, erected a temple in honour of Vesta, of a round form, and ordained perpetual fire to be kept in the middle of it. Book Description: It was Isaac Newton's Principia that founded the law of universal gravitation on 5th July 1687. It is the same principia that inspired Albert Einstein into formulating the Einstein field equations (the general relativity theory). It is still the same principia, I believe, will lead us to the quantum theory of gravity (Quantum gravity) According to Newton's Principia, the force of gravity governs the movement of bodies in the solar system. It is this simple mathematical law which determines the motion of bodies. The force of gravity accurately predicts the planetary orbits, it was used to put the first man on the moon, it predicts the return of comets, the rotation of galaxies, the solar eclipses, artificial satellites, satellite communications and television, the GPS and interplanetary probes. I almost forgot, it is why NASA was established in the first plac