Introduction to True Physics

Innumerable volumes are produced, all of which—if you exclude the offspring of Paracelsus, Helmont Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580–1644), a chemist and physician who bridged the gap between alchemy and early chemistry., Verulam Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Baron Verulam, who championed the inductive scientific method., Descartes, and a few others from the group—wander along the same string. original: "chordâ oberrant eâdem." A Latin idiom meaning to harp on the same string or repeat the same mistakes over and over.

Indeed, the entire variety of books in which Physics As noted previously, this refers to Natural Philosophy—the study of the physical world. exults, when inspected more closely, suggests infinite repetitions of the same matter everywhere, differing only in their modes of treatment and preoccupied with earlier inventions: though everything appears numerous at first glance, upon examination, few things are found.

Books are expanded by countless commentaries and reduced into compendiums handbooks or summaries that condense larger works for easier study; to these, and to their explanations, are given their own judgments and their own praises; they are translated into foreign languages; specific passages of books debated publicly from university chairs are submitted to the Printing Presses; and Booksellers, gaping for profit, open a thousand other paths of writing—which it would be tedious to count—for those with an itch to write. Thus, so that nothing else from such a circle of controversies—