ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the developments of new knowledge, as indeed Alexandre Koyre did in other writings. It explains with the historians of metaphysical ideas that a mathematical rather than qualitative physics implies acceptance both of the fundamentally mathematical character of nature itself, and of the unreality of qualities. The philosopher rightly believes that events in nature follow a logical pattern: but it is the logic of number. A table of logarithms to the base 10 for the first thousand numbers was published by Henry Briggs in 1617. Logarithms offered a compelling instance of the utility of the decimal system of fractions, of which Steven had been a most forceful advocate some thirty years earlier. Geometrical considerations show that if the body could escape along the radius-vector by which it is tied to the centre, it would, in successive equal times. Traverse distances increasing in the series of odd numbers, just as Galileo had proved for falling bodies.
