The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 07 (of 11) — Thomas Hobbes — John Shaqi
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 07 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
To the eleventh, you say first, you have done it better at the
sixty-fourth article of your _Arithmetica Infinitorum_. But what you
have done there, shall be examined when I come to the defence of my next
chapter. And whereas I direct the reader for the finding of the
proportions of the complements of those figures to the figures
themselves, to the table of art. 3, Chap, XVII., you say that if the
increase of the _spaces_, were to the increase of the times, as one to
two, then the complement should be to the parallelogram as one to three,
and say you find not (1)/(3) in the table. Did you not see that the
table is only of those figures which are described by the concourse of a
motion uniform with a motion accelerated? You had no reason therefore to
look for (1)/(3) in that table; for your case is of motion uniform
concurring with motion retarded, because you make not the proportions of
the spaces to the proportions of the times as two to one, but the
contrary; so that your objection ariseth from want of observing what you
read. But I “_may learn_” you say, “_these, and greater matters than
these, in your twenty-third and sixty-fourth propositions of your_
Arithmetica Infinitorum.” This, which you say here is a great absurdity;
but if you mean I shall find greater there, I will not say against you.
This (1)/(3) you looked for, belongs to the complements of the figures
calculated in that table; which because you are not able to find out of
yourselves, I will direct you to them. Your case is of (1)/(3) for the
complement of a parabola. Take the denominator of the fraction which
belongs to the parabola, namely three, and for numerator take the
numerator of the fraction which belongs to the triangle, namely one, and
you have the fraction sought. And in like manner for the complement of
any other figure. As, for example, of the second parabolaster, whose
fraction hath for denominator five, take the numerator of the fraction
of the same triangle which is one, and you have (1)/(3) for the fraction
sought for; and so of the rest, taking always one for the numerator.
The twelfth article, which you say is miserably false, I have left
standing unaltered. For not comprehending the sense of the proposition,
you make a figure of your own, and fight against your own fancied
motions, different from mine. Other geometricians that understand the
construction better, find no fault. And if you had in your own fifth
figure drawn a line through N parallel to A E, and upon that line
supposed your accelerated motion, you would quickly have seen that in
the time A E, the body moved from rest in A, would have fallen short of
the diagonal A D; and that all your extravagant pursuing of your own
mistake had been absurd.