Based on our current scientific and editorial project (Pisano, Bussotti
2014–2022) concerning a critical, commented translation – from Latin into English
– of Newton’s Principia - Geneva Edition (1739-1742), new details and insights
are here presented. The Geneva Edition of the Principia is an annotated
edition of Newton’s masterpiece. The apparatus of notes is broad and longer than
Newton’s text itself. The notes concern and clarify several aspects of Newton’s
procedures and methods, but they also refer to the development of theoretical
mathematics and physics after the publication of Principia’s first edition (1687).
In many notes there are also historical considerations which trace the history of a
certain concept until Newton. Thence, these notes are a precious instrument to
guess some aspects of history of physics and mathematics before Newton, in Newton’s
epoch and immediately after Newton’s death. In this contribution, the notes
concerning integral calculus will be analysed as a case study. They offer an interesting
example of the huge work carried out by the editors of the Geneva Edition.
