METHOD OF INCREMENTS, a branch of Analytics, in which a calculus is founded on the properties of the successive values of variable quantities, and their differences or increments.
The inventor of the method of increments was the learned Dr Taylor, who, in the year 1715, published a treatise upon it; and afterwards gave some farther account and explication of it in the Philos. Trans. as applied to the finding of the sums of series. And another ingenious and easy treatise on the same, was published by Mr Emerson, in the year 1763. The method is nearly allied to Newton's Doctrine of Fluxions, and arises out of it. Also the Differential method of Mr Stirling, which applies to the summation and interpolation of series, is of the same nature as the method of increments, but not so general and extensive.