TABLE OF CONTENTS Mathematical Analysis
... mathematical analysis is as extensive as nature itself; it defines all perceptible relations, measures time, spaces, forces, temperatures; this difficult science is formed slowly, but it preserves every principle which it has once acquired ...
Its chief attribute is clearness; it has no marks to express confused notions. It brings together phenomena the most diverse and discovers the hidden analogies which unite them. If matter escapes us, as that of air and light, by its extreme tenuity, if bodies are placed far from us in the immensity of space, if man wishes to know the aspect of the heavens at successive epochs separated by a great number of centuries, if the actions of gravity and of heat are exerted in the interior of the earth at depths which will be always inaccessible, mathematical analysis can yet lay hold of the laws of these phenomena. It makes them present and measurable, and seems to be a faculty of the human mind destined to supplement the shortness of life and the imperfection of the senses; and what is still more remarkable, it follows the same course in the study of all phenomena; it interprets them by the same language, as if to attest to the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe....
Joseph...
