Mathematische Grundlagen der Naturphilosophie

The present selected edition, following Newtons own recommendation, concentrates on those parts of the Principia that are necessary for an understanding of the work's importance in philosophical and theological matters. The reader will find the central argument of the book's theocentric dimension in the scholium generale at the end of book 3. In his introduction, the editor stresses this point which other Newtoniana often suppress. Additionally he shows mathematically, and thus conclusively, a hitherto unknown read threat to lead from Newton's principles to the foundations of modern physics (special relativity, quantum mechanics), which allows to see this physics in fact as a reformation of Newtonian principles, and to understand it philosophically, after all. Thanks to the editor's proof that the said principles are confirmed by experimental results of modern physics, the Principia unfold an extraordinary explosive force in the above-mentioned debates on free will, evolution, and science vs. religion. The editor has expanded these aspects in a book entitled „Die Rehabilitierung des Galileo Galilei oder Kritik der kantischen Vernunft“ (The Rehabilitation of Galileo, or a Criticism of Kantian Reason), showing there also some close relations to the criticism of Kantian reason expressed by Pope Benedict XVI., in his „Regensburg lecture“.