Principia Mathematica
Isaac Newton
12 people recommended it in 5 threads, 2009–2023.
What people on Hacker News said
mathematics from the source (like Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia)
Principia Mathematica is notable for creating modern notation despite it's failure to be a complete foundation of mathematics.
The problem is that it's in Latin and quite impenetrable.
Newton’s Principia is totally and absolutely impossible to understand to the average curious person raised on Cauchy and Weierstrass.
It is utterly comprehensible to any reader who has time, paper and pencil, and a copy of Euclid.
It is famously unintelligible to modern readers, even those with knowledge of physics.
Reading Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia really helped me get an intuitive feel for geometry and calculus.
Where it comes up
- Ask HN: Math books that made you significantly better at math? 2023 · 5 recommendations
- St. John’s Reading List: A Great Books Curriculum 2023 · 3 recommendations
- Extracting Hacker News book recommendations with the ChatGPT API 2023 · 2 recommendations
- Philosophy of mathematics – a reading list (2020) 2022 · 1 recommendation
- Students Ace Textbook Physics While Struggling With Basic Understanding (video) 2009 · 1 recommendation