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1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 42 (or the closest one...in this case, anyway).
3. Find the first full sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
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The word "infinite," however, has philosophical and mathematical overtones which we hoped to avoid by using "indefinite" or "without limit," a course which also enabled us to avoid any problems arising from the special senses of "infinite" in mathematics.
In the discussion of book 1, prop. 1, Evans and Mani would have a body being "perpetually drawn off from the tangent" by a force which "will act incessantly." Percival Frost similarly avoids "infinitely," and he adopts "indefinitely." For him, however, the limiting force "will act continuously." The problem for the translator is well exemplified by this proposition, which contains Newton's polygonal model. In the discussions of book 1, prop. 1, there is apt to be agreement that the limit of the polygonal trajectory is a curve, and therefore "continuous," whereas - as we shall see below - there is considerable discussion concerning whether the force can similarly be taken to act in the limit in a "continuous" manner. Accordingly, we have generally chosen the adjective "continual" and the associated adverb "continually," in order to avoid the confusion that would arise because "continuous" and its adverb "continuously" have a special t4echnical sense in today's mathematics. We are, however, mindful of the warnings of such authors as Partridge and Fowler.
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Dammit, introduction to the Principia... why do you have to have such long sentences? My copy of The Deptford Trilogy, by Robertson Davies, was the next book over in my backpack, why couldn't it have been that one? The sentences are so much shorter...
Feeling...:  tired |
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autophage's journal