Re: more on 'hypotheses non fingo"

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 11:17 10/5/99 -0400, Lois Breur Krause wrote:
> > Newton said it best - "Hypotheses non fingo." Few would argue that
> > Newton didn't know how to do science.
> >
> > Leigh
>
> translate please?  fingo?

Andrew Motte provided an early English translation of Principia in 1729.
 In the concluding part of Book 3, "The System of the World",
Motte rendered the phrase in the Principia's General Scholium
text as "I frame no hypotheses."

The pejorative tone of the word "frame" is not quite lost to American
ears, where eighteenth century English prose style is sometimes carried
 down to the current American idiom.

 To give a little more currency to this disdainful context, some later
translators render 'fingo' as feign. One might alternatively translate
the verb with "imagine, represent, sketch or fabricate".





brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK