"MINING ALL WITHIN" 



Clarke's Notes to Rohault's Traite de Physique 



(TM) 



SAINIUEL CLARKE, the son of a prominent Norwich 

 family, was just sixteen when in 1691 he entered Gonville 

 and Cains College, Cambridge. A quarter of a century 

 earlier Roger North had remarked on " a general inclination, 

 especially of the brisk part of the university," ^ to follow the 

 teaching of Descartes; in 1691 Clarke found Cartesian phi- 

 losophy established and his own tutor, John Ellis, a " zealot " 

 for it." 



One of the reasons for the Cartesian success had been the 

 excellent textbook on physics published in 1671 by Jacques 

 Rohault, a Cartesian whose ability as a teacher had been 

 partly responsible for the vogue for science in the French 

 capital. His Traite de Physique ^ had been quickly translated 

 into Latin by Theophile Bonet, and an edition of this trans- 

 lation was published in London in 1682. Edition after edition 

 of the Traite continued to appear in both French and Latin,* 



^R. North, Autobiography, Univ. Lib. Cambridge, MS. Baker 37, fol. 163-163v. 

 Cited in M. H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition (Oxford, 1959), p. 257. 



^ B. Hoadley in Samuel Clarke, Works (London, 1738) , I, p. i. 



^ For accounts of Rohault's work and especially of the Traite de Physique, see 

 P. Mouy, Le Developpement de la Physique Cartesienne (Paris: Vrin, 1934) , pp. 

 108-138, and R. Dugas, La Mecanique au XVIP siecle (Neuchatel: Editions du 

 Griffon, 1954) , pp. 252-263. 



* Mouy's account of these editions (op. cit., p. 137) has many errors. George 

 Sarton's " The Study of Early Scientific Textbooks," Isis XXXVIII (1947-8) , 137- 

 148, is more satisfactory. A fuller list is as follows: 



French editions, published in Paris: 1671 (1st ed.), 1672 (2nd ed.), 1676/5 



(3rd ed. corrigee) , 1676 (4th ed., reveiie & corrigee) , 1682 (4th ed., tres- 



exactement reveue & corrigee), 1683 (6th ed.) , 1692 (6th ed., tres-exactement 



reveue & corrigee), 1705, 1708 (12th ed.) , 1723, 1730. 



French editions published in Amsterdam: 1672, 1676. 



Latin translation by Bonet: 1674, Geneva: 1682, London; 1682, Amsterdam, 



with notes of Le Grand; 1700, Amsterdam, with notes of Le Grand. 



Latin translation by Clarke and with his notes: 1697 (1st version of notes), 



217 



