Stephenson:Neal:The System of the World
From the Quicksilver Metaweb.
This is the preliminary page for The System of the World
Stephensonia
We shall bid adeiu to the Enlightenment with this last installment of the Baroque Cycle... as we watch the Tories and Whigs clash.
Annotations Page
Initial Discussion
The System of the World is a novel by Neal Stephenson, the third in his "Baroque Cycle".
The title appears to be an allusion to the third volume of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Wikipedia Entry [[1]]
Novel = romance.
The System of the World
The System of the World (UK)
Nor was Isaac Newton the first to even entitle his theories with the appellation.
Galileo's chief contributions to science are his formulation of the laws governing falling bodies, the invention of the telescope, the discovery of the isochronism of the pendulum, and numerous astronomical discoveries, including the phases of Venus, four satellites of Jupiter, and the spots on the sun. His works were stricken from the Index in 1835. The most important are "The System of the World, in Four Dialogues" (Florence, 1632); and Mathematical Discourses and demonstrations touching two new Sciences (Leyden, 1638). -- In The Confusion, when Fatio is probing The Doctor about his feelings for Isaac — the two play roles from this talking about fractally dense library systems.
And he was not the last before different nomenclatures became the trend:
Marquis de Laplace — A French mathematician and scientist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Laplace produced the first modern theory to explain the formation of the solar system and the first modern theory of the tides. It too is called "The System of the World." See his link for his quote on God in science.
Spinoza and Leibniz both, although presented by Stephenson as mostly physical scientists, composed metaphysical "Theories of Everything,"; with strong implications for the physical reality.