The First Principles of Mechanics: With Historical and Practical Illustrations (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The First Principles of Mechanics: With Historical and Practical Illustrations

J ordanus's proof confessedly assumes that it requires the same force to raise a body up any vertical height as to raise a body smaller in any proportion up a vertical height greater in the same proportion, the bodies being supported an inclined planes. Such a proposition, if asserted in 1300, or even in 1564, must have been, I conceive, a mere guess; since it was not obviously connected with any self-evident principle or known truth. It was probably one of many conjectures, and till better reason was shewn, had no claim to attention, above the solution of the problem of the inclined plane recorded by Pappus. To speak of the principle of virtual velocities as assumed in this solution, is attributing to the author a detection of analogies of which it is highly unlikely that he had any ap prehension; and a generalisation which was not thought of till long afterwards.

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