Continuing a theme from my post last year on the Norton Critical Editions in natural science, today I'd like to take a look at another series, the Oxford World Classics. This is a series of classic works, mostly in literature, though other subjects are included, including natural science. There are two volumes of Charles Darwin's works, two of Sigmund Freud's, and a few works in medicine and natural history. I'm going to focus here on works in physics. As far as I can tell, there are only three:
- Aristotle's Physics.
- Galileo's Selected Writings.
- Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Greatest World Systems.
I see then that this series does not overlap with Norton's, whose only physics contribution I know of are selected works of Newton. The other, and most famous, competing series is, of course, the Penguin Classics, of which there are well over a thousand volumes. Theirs is a catalog so vast that I have not attempted to mine it to see what volumes of physics interest there may be. However, according to Wikipedia, one is Albert Einstein's Relativity: The Special and General Theory. I see that separately, Penguin also publishes The Essential Einstein, edited by Stephen Hawking, a collection of selected works.
A new addition to the Penguin Classics has just hit my desk: "The Dawn of Modern Cosmology: From Copernicus to Newton" (2024), edited by Aviva Rothman. This is an anthology of writings, illustrations, and other artifacts documenting the scientific revolution in understanding the solar system and the cosmos, focusing on the 200-year period alluded to in its title. The editor has included abridged versions of texts, avoiding more technical material, to help readers unschooled in mathematics, physics, and astronomy see what the participants in this revolution had to say. Let us hope that Penguin Classics might consider other scientific writings as fodder for future additions to its famous series of paperbacks.
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