Now I Will Have Less Distraction.

For Since The Fabric Of The Universe Is Most Perfect And The Work Of A Most Wise Creator, Nothing At All Takes Place In The Universe In Which Some Rule Of Maximum Or Minimum Does Not Appear.

I Soon Found An Opportunity To Be Introduced To A Famous Professor Johann Bernoulli. ... True, He Was Very Busy And So Refused Flatly To Give Me Private Lessons; But He Gave Me Much More Valuable Advice To Start Reading More Difficult Mathematical Books On My Own And To Study Them As Diligently As I Could; If I Came Across Some Obstacle Or Difficulty, I Was Given Permission To Visit Him Freely Every Sunday Afternoon And He Kindly Explained To Me Everything I Could Not Understand.

Notable Enough, However, Are The Controversies Over The Series 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 - ... Whose Sum Was Given By Leibniz As 1/2, Although Others Disagree. ... Understanding Of This Question Is To Be Sought In The Word "sum"; This Idea, If Thus Conceived - Namely, The Sum Of A Series Is Said To Be That Quantity To Which It Is Brought Closer As More Terms Of The Series Are Taken - Has Relevance Only For Convergent Series, And We Should In General Give Up The Idea Of Sum For Divergent Series.

Nothing Takes Place In The World Whose Meaning Is Not That Of Some Maximum Or Minimum.

If A Nonnegative Quantity Was So Small That It Is Smaller Than Any Given One, Then It Certainly Could Not Be Anything But Zero. To Those Who Ask What The Infinitely Small Quantity In Mathematics Is, We Answer That It Is Actually Zero. Hence There Are Not So Many Mysteries Hidden In This Concept As They Are Usually Believed To Be. These Supposed Mysteries Have Rendered The Calculus Of The Infinitely Small Quite Suspect To Many People. Those Doubts That Remain We Shall Thoroughly Remove In The Following Pages, Where We Shall Explain This Calculus.