 These principles illuminate the relationship between the theory of absolute space, as articulated in Newton’s Scholium to the Definitions, and the overarching scientific problem of the Principia. According to Newton, “the aim for which I composed” the book was to show “how to gather the true motions from their causes, effects, and apparent differences, and conversely, from the motions, true or apparent, to gather their causes and effects” (1687b, p. 11); the more specific aim of Book III was “to exhibit the constitution of the system of the world” (1687b, p. 401). 