在科学史上，《自然哲学之数学原理》是经典力学的第一部经典著作，划时代的巨著，也是人类掌握的第一个完整的科学的宇宙论和科学理论体系，其影响所及，遍布经典自然科学的所有领域，并在其后300年里一再取得丰硕成果。
就人类文明史而言，它成就了英国工业革命，在法国诱发了启蒙运动和大革命，在社会生产力和基本社会制度两方面都有直接而丰富的成果。迄今为止，还没有第二个重要的科学和学术理论，取得过如此之大的成就和影响。 从科学研究内部来看，《自然哲学之数学原理》示范了一种现代科学理论体系的样板，包括理论体系的结构、研究方法和研究态度、如何处理人与自然的关系等多方面内容。
《自然哲学之数学原理》达到的理论高度是前所未有的，其后也不多见。爱因斯坦说：“至今还没有可能用一个同样无所不包的统一概念，来替代牛顿的关于宇宙的统一概念。而要是没有牛顿的明晰的体系，我们到现在为止所取得的收获就会成为不可能。”
内容涉及天文、物理、生物、心理、政治、经济、法律与军事等领域。这些领域是过运河、现在和将来人类认识世界与发行世界必然从事的、关系人类命运与前途的事业。

Isaac Newton's "Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended", published in 1728, one year after the great man's death, unleashed a storm of controversy. And for good reason. The book presents a drastically revised timeline for ancient civilizations, contracting Greek history by five hundred years and Egypt's by a millennium. "Newton and the Origin of Civilization" tells the story of how one of the most celebrated figures in the history of mathematics, optics, and mechanics came to apply his unique ways of thinking to problems of history, theology, and mythology, and of how his radical ideas produced an uproar that reverberated in Europe's learned circles throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold reveal the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics. It was during Newton's earliest years at Cambridge that he developed the core of his singular method for generating and working with trustworthy knowledge, which he applied to his study of the past with the same rigor he brought to his work in physics and mathematics. Drawing extensively on Newton's unpublished papers and a host of other primary sources, Buchwald and Feingold reconcile Isaac Newton the rational scientist with Newton the natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian, and chronologist of ancient history.