Kepler's Area Law in the Principia: Filling in some details in Newton's proof of Prop. 1

dc.creatorNauenberg, Michael
dc.date2001-12-05
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T04:45:01Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T04:45:01Z
dc.descriptionDuring the past 25 years there has been a controversy regarding the adequacy of Newton's proof of Prop. 1 in Book 1 of the {\it Principia}. This proposition is of central importance because its proof of Kepler's area law allowed Newton to introduce a geometric measure for time to solve problems in orbital dynamics in the {\it Principia}. It is shown here that the critics of Prop. 1 have misunderstood Newton's fundamental limit argument by neglecting to consider the justification for this limit which he gave in Lemma 3. We clarify the proof of Prop. 1 by filling in some details left out by Newton which show that his proof of this proposition was adequate and well grounded.
dc.description4 figures
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/math/0112048
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/math/0112048
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/62823
dc.subjectHistory and Overview
dc.titleKepler's Area Law in the Principia: Filling in some details in Newton's proof of Prop. 1
dc.typetext

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