"When I had the honour of his conversation, I endeavoured to learn his thoughts upon mathematical subjects, and something historical concerning his inventions, that I had not been before acquainted with. I found, he had read fewer of the modern mathematicians, than one could have expected; but his own prodigious invention readily supplied him with what he might have an occasion for in the pursuit of any subject he undertook. I have often heard him censure the handling geometrical subjects by algebraic calculations; and his book of Algebra he called by the name of Universal Arithmetic, in opposition to the injudicious title of Geometry, which Des Cartes had given to the treatise, wherein he shews, how the geometer may assist his invention by such kind of computations. He frequently praised , Barrow and Huygens for not being influenced by the false taste, which then began to prevail. He used to commend the laudable attempt of Hugo de Omerique to restore the ancient analysis, and very much esteemed Apollonius's book De sectione rationis for giving us a clearer notion of that analysis than we had before."
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Preface; The bold passage is subject of the 1809 article "Remarks on a Passage in Castillione's Life' of Sir Isaac Newton." By John Winthrop, in: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, from Their Commencement, in 1665, to the Year 1800: 1770-1776: 1770-1776. et al. eds. (1809) p. 519.
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Henry Pemberton
Henry Pemberton (1694 – 9 March 1771) was an English physician and man of letters. He became Gresham Professor of Physic, and edited the third edition of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.
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