QSi PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1694. 



though they, of all the ancients, discourse the most upon spirits and incorporeal 

 substances. (Chap. 13.) 



When he speaks of ancient and modern mathematics, he produces a discourse 

 of that excellent geometer, Mr. John Craig, who endeavours to prove that 

 modern geometry is of infinitely larger extent than the ancient : and that it 

 has been enlarged by methods in a good measure unknown to, or at least, not 

 comparatively cultivated by, the ancients, which are, algebra and the method of 

 indivisibles, the particular advantages of the former of which in improving 

 arithmetic and geometry he at large insists upon. (Chap. 14.) 



Afterwards when he comes to physics, our author observes that there are 

 several instruments and arts, which are necessary tools to a good philosopher, 

 that have been either invented, or very much improved by moderns, for want 

 of which it was impossible for the ancients to understand nature so well as it 

 has since been understood. Among instruments wholly modern he reckons, 

 1. Printing, which is useful to all learned men alike. 2. Engraving upon wood 

 and copper, which is peculiarly useful to all writers of natural history and mathe- 

 matics. 3. Telescopes, first invented by Zacharius Joannides, a spectacle maker 

 of Middleburgh, about the year 1 59O, whereby the heavens have become more 

 accessible to modern astronomers than they were to the ancients. 4. Micro- 

 scopes, the invention of the same Joannides, of infinite use in discovering the 

 texture of minute bodies. 5. Baroscopes, by which the comparative gravitation 

 of air upon terrestrial bodies may be found out. 6. Thermometers, to adjust 

 the variations of heat and cold. 7- Air-pumps, very useful in discovering many 

 hidden properties of the air. 8. Pendulum clocks, necessary for astronomers 

 in measuring small subdivisions of time, when they make their observations. 

 (Chap. 15.) 



Amongst preliminary arts he reckons chemistry and anatomy ; by chemistry 

 he understands the art of separating bodies by fire ; and he observes that though 

 the ancients could refine metals from their dross to a good degree, yet for want 

 of aqua-fortis they could not part them from one another so well as can be done at 

 present. He says, chemistry, properly so called, is mostly owing to the Arabs, 

 and that the Greeks knew scarcely any thing at all of it ; but yet that the use of 

 chemical preparations in physic is almost entirely owing to the physicians of this 

 and the last age, since the time of Paracelsus. (Chap. 16.) 



Of anatomy he says, that the skill of the ancients in it reached only to those 

 parts that are discoverable by the naked eye, and even there not so far as the 

 moderns have carried it in any one particular: that the extent of the ancients' 

 Knowledge in that matter may be certainly known frort) the anatomical discourses 



