[Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books by Charles W. Eliot]@TWC D-Link book
Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books

PREFACE TO THE PHILOSOPHIAE NATURALIS PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA
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But the errors are not in the art, but in the artificers.

He that works with less accuracy is an imperfect mechanic: and if any could work with perfect accuracy, he would be the most perfect mechanic of all; for the description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics.

Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn; for it requires that the learner should first be taught to describe these accurately, before he enters upon geometry; then it shows how by these operations problems may be solved.

To describe right lines and circles are problems, but not geometrical problems.

The solution of these problems is required from mechanics; and by geometry the use of them, when so solved, is shown; and it is the glory of geometry that from those few principles, fetched from without, it is able to produce so many things.


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