Scope and Contents Batavia is a seventeenth-century cognomen for the Netherlands, to which David Gregory went in the spring of 1693, mostly to talk science with Christiaan Huygens. This document is a list of some books he wished to buy for himself and for friends back home, if he could find them. They covered Palladius, Thucydides, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Erasmus, "all I can find of the Roman Authors at Amst[erdam]", and others. On the reverse is a list of topics he wished to discuss when he finally sat...

Scope and Contents

Notes of a conversation in Holland with Christian Huygens, concerning an 'horologium' to show hours, months, years, and planetary positions. More general mention of the work of numerous other scientists: Notably, Huygens disputes the notion of John Bernoulli (James Bernoulli's younger brother) that the curve of an inflated sail is part-catenary and part-circle, and warns that Newton ought not to be 'deflected' into theology or chemistry.