I had an elective class at St. John's where we read selections from Newton's Principia (ISBN 9781888009262) together with William Blake's long poem "Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion".
The goal was not to learn how to do physics calculations, but to understand each writer's concept of reality and humanity's relationship to it. I remember that Blake really focused on the worth of actually instantiated reality, what he called "minute particulars", in contrast to Newton's abstractions:
He who would do good to another, must do it in Minute Particulars
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel hypocrite & flatterer:
For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars
And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power.
Also, Newton's Principia uses Euclidian-style demonstrations to illustrate many of his points, whereas today we would use algebraic calculus. That was fun, since everyone in the room had also worked through the first book of Euclid's Elements.
Similarly, a related project is an effort to assemble a chronological list of books where the oldest text which is still valid given contemporary knowledge of the subject is listed includes Euclid's _Elements_ of course:
The goal was not to learn how to do physics calculations, but to understand each writer's concept of reality and humanity's relationship to it. I remember that Blake really focused on the worth of actually instantiated reality, what he called "minute particulars", in contrast to Newton's abstractions:
Also, Newton's Principia uses Euclidian-style demonstrations to illustrate many of his points, whereas today we would use algebraic calculus. That was fun, since everyone in the room had also worked through the first book of Euclid's Elements.