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Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:Reference Bibliography

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In the novel's acknowledgments, there are no specific works cited, but several authors are named as sources. Most of these authors have written numerous books (and presumably some other papers and articles) that may have provided source material for the novel.

More specific information follows:

About Leibniz

It is much more difficult for the non-scholar to get information about Leibniz than about Newton, because there are fewer biographies of Leibniz (at least, in English) and because much of Leibniz's written work consists of exchanges of letters that are still being sorted through even to this day, or so I am told. Metaphysics never makes for easy reading, even under ideal conditions. When it is metaphysics written three hundred years ago by a man who tended to come out with different versions of his theories as his thinking developed (which seems to be true of Leibniz) it can be pretty forbidding.

The most approachable English-language compilation of Leibniz that I have encountered is G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays, edited and translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber and published 1989 by Hackett (ISBN 0872200639, ISBN 0872200620). This book works well for people who like to come to grips directly with the source material (i.e. what Leibniz actually wrote). Ariew and Garber have done us the great favor of sifting through the vast corpus of material that Leibniz wrote, choosing the really good stuff, presenting it in a clear translation without a lot of introductory material, but supplying footnotes where needed to make difficult bits clearer. In the back is an excellent Brief Biographies of Some Contemporaries of Leibniz, most useful for anyone trying to follow the currents of thought that flowed through the Baroque period. This book is the first one I'd recommend for any English-reading person who wants to read some Leibniz.

In a similar vein, Roger Ariew and the Hackett Publishing Company have also given us Leibniz and Clarke: Correspondence (ISBN 087220524X), an edited and translated version of the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence of 1714-1716, a philosophical debate between Leibniz and Newton that is, to put it mildly, important to The Baroque Cycle.

The work that Leibniz did on laying the foundations of computer science is covered in two recent books: The Universal Computer: the Road from Leibniz to Turing by Martin Davis of UC Berkeley (ISBN 0393047857) and Darwin Among the Machines: the Evolution of Global Intelligence by George B. Dyson (ISBN 0738200301).

One of the most useful things I read during this project was a Ph.D. thesis by one Hans Georg Schulte-Albert, submitted to Case Western Reserve University in June of 1972. It is entitled Leibniz's Plans for a World Encyclopaedia System.

People who would prefer to read secondary material about Leibniz's philosophy---that is, summaries, criticism, analysis, etc. of what Leibniz wrote---might want to have a look at The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, edited by Nicholas Jolley (ISBN 0521367697) which is a compilation of essays by various contributors, and Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealistby Robert Merrihew Adams (ISBN 0195084608). The latter is especially useful for its longitudinal treatment of the development of Leibniz's thought, i.e., Adams has gone to the trouble of tracking how Leibniz's ideas changed over his lifetime. These changes can be a rich source of bewilderment for modern readers trying to make out what Leibniz really believed!

N.B. it needs to be mentioned that my reading has been spotty, rather than systematic, and so it is likely that there are many good books about Leibniz and related topics that I have missed.Nealstephenson 11:50, 31 Oct 2003 (PST)

About Newton

It's unlikely that there will ever be another Newton biography that combines scholarly thoroughness with writerly readability as well as Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton by Richard S. Westfall, hardback ISBN 0521231434, paperback ISBN 0521274354. It needs to be in the library of anyone who is seriously interested in this period (or in the history of science generally).

In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton and his Times by Gale E. Christianson (ISBN 0029051908) is, as the title implies, more of a "life and times" sort of treatment, which is to say that Christianson provides a lot of useful and interesting background as to what else was going on in the world during Newton's lifetime.

Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Margaret C. Jacob (ISBN 0391038788) focuses on Newton's thought, and his place in the history of science, philosophy, and theology (three disciplines that were much more closely entwined, for Newton, than they are for most people nowadays!). If your real interest is in the ideas, then reading this book is a good way to "cut to the chase."

A handy reference for anyone interested in this period is The Newton Handbook by Derek Gjertsen (ISBN 0710202792). This is arranged, encyclopedia-style, as a series of concise entries in alphabetical order. Many of the entries are capsule biographies of various players, others treat scientific topics such as Inertia and Vacuum, still others are on general topics relevant in one way or another to Newton's life and work.

Newton's Principia Mathematica is pretty forbidding unless you know Latin and are very good at puzzling out geometrical proofs. The most accessible treatment I found was the (perhaps ironically named) Newton's Principia for the Common Reader by S. Chandrasekhar (ISBN 019852675X). The author goes through Newton's arguments chapter by chapter, explaining them in modern English and parsing Newton's Euclidean-style geometrical proofs.

In closing, I'll reiterate the warning made above with respect to Leibniz, namely that my reading has been spotty and so it is likely that there are many good books about Newton that I have missed.Nealstephenson 16:09, 9 Nov 2003 (PST)

About Hooke

Less has been written about Hooke, though when I was in the UK recently I was delighted to see a new biography of him by Lisa Jardine in bookstores. As far as I can make out, this has not come out in the States yet. If you are on the west side of the Atlantic you can get it online from UK booksellers. The title is The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London (ISBN 0007149441). I didn't bring a copy home, and haven't read it, but can recommend it anyway on the strength of Lisa Jardine's past work.

Curiously, Hooke does a much better job speaking for himself, three hundred years after his death, than either Newton or Leibniz. Since he was so good at so many things, it shouldn't surprise us that on top of everything else he was a writer. Once I got accustomed to the Baroque spellings and phrasings, I found that Hooke was one of the most proficient (as well as prolific!) explainers of scientific concepts who has worked in the English language.

If you can only read one work by Hooke, the one to choose would be Micrographia, which can be hunted down in various facsimile editions. Try to find one that does justice to his engravings!

A facsimile edition of Hooke's Philosophical Experiments and Observations, edited by W. Derham, was published in 1967 by Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., as No. 8 in the Cass Library of Science Classics.

Frank Cass & Co., Ltd. also published The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke in 1971. This is a large (folio) facsimile volume with a modern introduction.

Hooke was also something of a diarist, not quite in the league of Samuel Pepys or John Evelyn (Hooke was much more concise) but for the same reason he is more pithy and readable than the others. The diary can be hunted down in libraries or with Google. Nealstephenson 11:28, 10 Nov 2003 (PST)