SOURCE: "Newton and the Pipes of Pan," in Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 21, No. 2, December 1966, pp. 108-43.

In the following essay, McGuire and Rattansi examine unpublished drafts of a proposed Scholia to Propositions IV through IX of Newton's Principia. The critics argue that these papers demonstrate Newton's conviction that he was rediscovering truths once revealed to the ancients by God.

What is it, by means of wch, bodies act on one another at a distance. And to what Agent did the Ancients attribute the gravity of their atoms and what did they mean by calling God an harmony and comparing him & matter (the corporeal part of the Universe) to the God Pan and his Pipe. Can any space be without something in it & what is that something in space void of matter (& what are its properties & operations on matter).

Draft of Query 27 of...