Continuing a slight diversion that began with my November 2021 post on the Cambridge Companions series, let's consider independent publisher W. W. Norton's series of Critical Editions. The Norton Critical Editions are annotated editions of classic works, mostly of literature, along with editorial apparatus including context and commentary. Until recently I owned only one NCE, of Machiavelli's The Prince, and was not aware that any books in the series covered natural science. I recently became aware that there are at least three NCEs on natural science: two on biology, and one on physics and mathematics. One is an NCE of James Watson's The Double Helix, edited by Gunther Stent (1980), and the other two are anthologies of selected writings of Isaac Newton (ed. by I. B. Cohen and R. S. Westfall, 1995) and Charles Darwin (ed. by P. Appleman, 1970; 3d edition, 2001). If that is a complete list of NCEs in natural science, then it has been over 20 years since the last one was revised, while no others have been issued.
These books seem to be intended for use in humanities courses. The volume on Newton, which I recently acquired, does have some technical material, but is not dominated by it. And perhaps this explains why there are no other NCEs for physicists. Too bad!
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