"Every measurable thing except numbers is imagined in the manner of a continuous quantity. Therefore, for the mensuration of such a thing, it is necessary that points, lines, and surfaces, or their properties, be imagined. For in them... measure or ratio is initially found... Therefore, every intensity which can be acquired successively ought to be imagined by a straight line perpendicularly erected on some point of the space or subject of the intensible thing, e.g., a quality... And since the quantity or ratio of lines is better known and is more readily conceived by us—nay the line is in the first species continua, therefore such intensity ought to be imagined by lines... Therefore, equal intensities are designated by equal lines, a double intensity by a double line, and always in the same way if one proceeds proportionally."
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Nicole Oresme, Treatise on the Configuration of Qualities and Motions (c. 1350) Tr. Marshall Clagett in Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions: A Treatise on the Uniformity and Difformity of Intensities Known as "Tractatus de configurationibus et qualitatibus et motuum" (1968) Ch. 1-2.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
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History of mathematics
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