An account of Sir Isaac Newton's philosophical discoveries : in four books / By Colin Maclaurin. Published from the author's manuscript papers, by Patrick Murdoch.

  • Colin MacLaurin
Date:
1750
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of Sir Isaac Newton's philosophical discoveries : in four books / By Colin Maclaurin. Published from the author's manuscript papers, by Patrick Murdoch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    long fubfift; but his philofophy, being founded on experiment and demondration, cannot tail till reafon or the nature of things are changed. In order to proceed with perfedt fecurity, and to put an end for ever to difputes, he propofed that, in our enquiries into nature, the methods of analyfis and fynthefis fhould be both employed in a proper or¬ der •, that we fhould begin with the phenomena, or effects, and from them inveftigate the powers or caufes that operate in nature ; that, from particular caufes, we fhould proceed to the more general ones, till the argument end in the mod general : this is the method of analyfis. Being once poffeft of thefe caufes, we fhould then defcend in a contrary order; and from them, as edablifhed principles, explain all the phenomena that are their confequences, and prove our explications : and this is the fiynthefis. It is evident that, as in mathematics, fo in natural philofophy, the invedigation of difficult things by the method of analyfis ought ever to precede the method of compofition, or thz fynthefis. For in any other way, we can never be fure that we affume the principles which really obtain in nature *, and that our fydem, after we have compofed it with great labour, is not mere dream and illufion. Is By proceeding according to this method, he de¬ mon ft rated from obfervations, analytically, that gra¬ vity is a general principle ; from which he after¬ wards explained the fydem of the world. By analyfis he difeovered new and wonderful properties of light, and, from thefe, accounted for many curious pheno¬ mena in a fiynthetic way. But while he was thus de- mondrating a great number of truths, he could not but meet with hints of many other things, that his fagacity and diligent obfervation fuggeded to him, which
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