Jost Bürgi · Vinony

Jost Bürgi · Vinony

Quotes

“[D]ue to a lack of languages, the door to... authors has not always been open to me, as... to others, I have had to follow my own thoughts a little more than the learned and well-read, and seek new paths.(Und weil mir auß mangel der sprachen die thür zu den authoribus nit alzeitt offen gestanden, wie andern, hab jch etwas mehr, als etwa die glehrte vnd belesene meinen eigenen gedanckhen nachhengen vnd newe wege suechen müessen.)”
“Divide a right angle in as many parts as you want and construct herefrom the sine table.(Einen rechten Winckell in also viel theile theilenn alß man will, vnnd aus demselben den Canonen Sinuum vermachenn.)”
“If a hint could have urged any human mind thus rapidly upon the theory of the Logarithms, there was a hint which arose in the , which was submerged in the middle ages, and rose again with the letters of Greece; which Tycho had — which Stifellius, Byrgius [Bürgi], Longomontanus, and above all which Kepler had—and all made no more of it than Archimedes had done.”
“Yet the facts have been imposingly detailed by Montucla in his great history of Mathematics, and hitherto without any refutation. If Dr Hutton, instead of confusing the history of Logarithms to the further detriment of Napier's intellectual rights, by appearing to assume that the conquest, which our philosopher alone imagined and accomplished, was the work of many, had refuted the false claim we are about to expose, he would thereby have only done justice to his country.”
“The miserable fragment of miscalculated tables discovered by Kästner proves nothing, for there is neither description nor claim attached to them, and their date is 1620; and any support which the claim attempted to be reared upon that fragment may seem to obtain from the notice of Kepler (also very vague) is more than neutralized by Kepler himself.”
“[T]hough Montucla was not aware of the fact... the... place where Kepler himself first saw a copy of John Napier's Canon Mirificus was THE ANCIENT CITY OF PRAGUE, and this was in the year 1617.”

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