The Commonplace Book of Edmond Halley

Abstract

HALLEY’S personal and professional papers have survived in reasonable numbers, but little attention has been accorded to his Commonplace Book . Indeed, for more than two centuries the existence of the work remained unknown to scholarship. In 1898, in a footnote to the sketch of Halley in his edition of Aubrey’s Brief Lives , Andrew Clark reported: ‘In the Earl of Macclesfield’s library at Shirburne Castle, Oxon., are several MSS. by Halley; among them a common-place book ’. E. F. MacPike, compiler of Halley’s correspondence and papers, twice referred to this ‘inedited’ commonplace book and expressed his wish that it ‘ could be examined by a competent scholar ’. Yet it was not until the early 1950s, while he was collecting Newton’s correspondence for the Royal Society, that Professor H. W. Turnbull came upon the document and verified its identity as Halley’s. To date, however, no portion of the manuscript has been published. Our essential purpose is therefore to present Halley’s Commonplace Book to the learned world. To this end we provide, first, an introduction to Halley’s sources, second, a description of the manuscript and a register of its contents, and, third, a text of the most remarkable entry, Halley’s ‘Observations & Maximes’.