Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 1: Containing a collection of some of the principal phaenomena in nature, accounted for by the greatest philosophers of this age
History
Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 1: Containing a collection of some of the principal phaenomena in nature, accounted for by the greatest philosophers of this age
Natural history; Science -- Early works to 1800; Voyages and travels -- Early works to 1800
The different views of Humane Understanding are almost infinite; and
Nature is really so. So that we may every day expect some Discoveries,
either in Mathematicks or Natural Philosophy, which shall be of a new
sort of Utility or Curiosity. Make a Collection of all the different
Advantages which the Mathematicks afforded a Hundred Years ago, and
you'll find nothing to be compar'd to the Perspective Glasses they have
furnish'd since that time, and which are a new Organ to the Sight, and
cou'd not be expected from Art. How surpriz'd had the Ancients been, if
they had been told that their Posterity, by the help of some
Instruments, shou'd one day see a vast number of Objects which they did
not see; a Heaven that was unknown to them; and Plants and Animals they
did not even suspect it was possible to exist. Naturalists had already a
great many curious Experiments; but within about half a Century, the
Air-Pump hath produced a prodigious quantity of them wholly new, and
which by shewing Bodies in a Space void of Air, shews them as
transported in a World different from ours, where they undergo
Alterations whereof we had no Notion. The Excellency of Geometrical
Methods, which are every day invented and improv'd, may perhaps at last
exhaust Geometry; that is, The Art of making Geometrical Discoveries,
and that is all: Whereas Natural Philosophy, which contemplates an
Object of an unlimited Variety, and _Fæcundity_, shall always find room
for new Observations, and opportunities to increase its vast Stock, and
shall have the Advantage of never being a compleat Science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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