CALCULUS, in mathematics, denotes a certain way of performing investigations and resolutions, which occur on many occasions, particularly in mechanical philosophy. Thus we say, the antecedental calculus, the algebraical calculus, the arithmetical calculus, the differential calculus, the exponential calculus, the fluxional calculus, and the integral calculus. Of by much the greater part of these calculi some account has been given in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; but there is one of them, of which no notice has been taken in that work. It is,
The Antecedental Calculus, a geometrical method of reasoning, without any consideration of motion or velocity, applicable to every purpose to which the much celebrated doctrine of fluxions of the illustrious Newton has been, or can be, applied. This method was invented by James Glenie, Esq; "in which (he says) every expression is truly and strictly geometrical, is founded on principles frequently made use of by the ancient geometers, principles admitted into the very first elements of geometry, and repeatedly used by EUCLID himself. As it is a branch of general geometrical proportion, or universal comparison, and is derived from an examination of the antecedents of ratios, having given consequents and a given standard of comparison in the various degrees of augmentation and diminution they undergo by composition and decomposition, I have called it the antecedental calculus. As it is purely geometrical, and perfectly scientific, I have, since it first occurred to me in 1779, always made use of it instead of the fluxional and differential calculi, which are merely arithmetical. Its principles are totally unconnected with the ideas of motion and time, which,