Newton's Principia : $b The mathematical principles of natural philosophyNewton, Isaac
General
Newton's Principia : $b The mathematical principles of natural philosophy
Newton, Isaac
Celestial mechanics -- Early works to 1800; Mechanics -- Early works to 1800
It may also be objected, that if the ultimate ratios of evanescent
quantities are given, their ultimate magnitudes will be also given:
and so all quantities will consist of indivisibles, which is contrary
to what Euclid has demonstrated concerning incommensurables, in
the 10th Book of his Elements. But this objection is founded on a false
supposition. For those ultimate ratios with which quantities vanish are
not truly the ratios of ultimate quantities, but limits towards which
the ratios of quantities decreasing without limit do always converge;
and to which they approach nearer than by any given difference, but
never go beyond, nor in effect attain to, till the quantities are
diminished in infinitum. This thing will appear more evident
in quantities infinitely great. If two quantities, whose difference
is given, be augmented in infinitum, the ultimate ratio of
these quantities will be given, to wit, the ratio of equality; but it
does not from thence follow, that the ultimate or greatest quantities
themselves, whose ratio that is, will be given. Therefore if in what
follows, for the sake of being more easily understood, I should happen
to mention quantities as least, or evanescent, or ultimate, you are not
to suppose that quantities of any determinate magnitude are meant, but
such as are conceived to be always diminished without end.
SECTION II.
Of the Invention of Centripetal Forces.
PROPOSITION I. THEOREM I.
The areas, which revolving bodies describe by radii drawn to an
immovable centre of force do lie in the same immovable planes, and are
proportional to the times in which they are described.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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