Page:Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - with preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences - illustrated by engravings (IA gri 33125011196629).pdf/11

 PART I.

conformity to the plan which has been traced and executed with so much ability in the First Dissertation, I am now to present the reader with an historical sketch of the principal discoveries made in Natural Philosophy, from the revival of letters down to the present time. In entering on this task, and on looking at the instructive but formidable model already set before me, I should experience no small solicitude, did I not trust that the subject of which I am to speak, in order to be interesting, needs only to be treated with clearness and precision. These two requisites I will endeavour to keep steadily in view.

In the order which I am to follow, I shall be guided solely by a regard to the subserviency of one science to the progress of another, and to the consequent priority of the former in the order of regular study. For this reason, the history of the pure Mathematics will be first considered, as that science has been one of the two principal instruments applied by the moderns to the advancement of natural knowledge. The other instrument is Experience; and, therefore, the principles of the inductive method, or of the branch of Logic which teaches the application of experiment and observation to the interpretation of nature, must be the second object of inquiry; and in this article I shall give an account of Bacon’s Philosophy, as applied to Physical investigation. After these two sections, which may in some measure be considered as introductory, I am to treat of Na- 1em