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Excerpt from Gravitation: An Elementary Explanation of the Principal Perturbations in the Solar System
In laying this work before the public, I think it right to state the object for which it was originally composed, and the circumstances which have in some degree changed its destination.
The treatise was originally designed for a class of readers who might be supposed to possess a moderate acquaintance with the phnomena and the terms of astronomy; geometrical notions sufficient to enable them to understand simple inferences from diagrams; two or three terms of algebra as applied to numbers; but none of that elevated science which has always been used in the investigation of these subjects, and without which scarcely an attempt has been made to explain them. I proposed to myself, therefore, this general design: to explain the perturbations of the solar system, as far as I was able, without introducing an algebraic symbol.
It will readily be believed that, after thus denying myself the use of the most powerful engine of mathematics, I did not expect to proceed very far.
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