This is the book that set the stage for the Industrial Revolution and our modern world. Newton taught us that nature and relations among material objects can be predictable. If a person understands physics (natural philosophy and its related mathematics), he/she can design a machine on a blueprint, and it might actually work. Useful things can be invented, and not merely discovered through serendipity or trial and error.<br><br>Newton cleverly employed the method of Euclid by first assuming the truth of three axioms (or laws) of motion and demonstrating their consequences for other concerns through deductive logic. Reading the original (or in this case an English translation from Latin) can be most enlightening.