Newton Goes East: Natural Philosophy in the First Malay Grammar (1736) and the First Malay Bible (1733)

George Henrik Werndly’s work in Malay grammar, literature, and Bible translation can be understood and explained in the context of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century natural philosophy, especially natural philosophy in the spirit of Newton. The Dutch natural philosopher Lambert ten Kate, who was deeply influenced by Isaac Newton, is one of the main channels through which the ideas of the natural philosophy tradition reached Werndly. Ten Kate had applied the methodologies of natural philosophy to linguistics in ways that inspired Werndly to follow the same approach in his grammar of Malay