Encounter with Mathematics - 《数学概观》
Thursday, October 27, 2005 10:57:39 PM
牛顿的《原理》1999年出版了Cohen英文翻译本,网上可以免费获得的都是拉丁文原版扫描,不知道看懂者几许,cohen的译本评价不错,关于《原理》本身,amazon.com上有个评论很有趣:
不过连同导读部分,此书近1000页,要看上一段时间。I suffered through college math all the way through differential equations, and I never really "got" it. I just memorized the steps and, when exam time rolled around, hoped I could remember which procedure went with which problem. The light finally came on in grad school, and _Principia_ was the switch. Reading the _Principia_ let me get underneath formal calculus and imbued it with a sense of wonder and soul. To see the theory set out step-by-step, to follow with Newton as he envisioned a new way of painting the world, gave me the ability to internalize the calculus, to say, finally, "Yes, that's intuitively right." I wish I'd read the _Principia_ much earlier in my education. It would have saved me a lot of pain.