Page:The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy - 1729 - Volume 1.djvu/13

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INCE the ancients (as we are told by Pappus'') made great account of the cience of mechanics in the invetigation of natural things; and the moderns, laying aide ubtantial forms and occult qualities, have endeavored to ubject the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics, I have in this treatie cultivated Mathematics o far as it regards Philoophy. The ancients considered Mechanics in a twofold repect; as rational, which proceeds accurately by demontration, and practical. To practical Mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which Mechanics took its name. But as artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it comes to pas that Mechanics is so ditinguished from Geometry, that what is perfectly''