thank you for your interest.

Most sincerely, Ballister-ffoulkes

24 January 1667 Cambridge

My dear Isaac,

I am truly sorry I didn't get around to looking over your second manuscript until now, but, to be perfectly truthful, I have been outlining our course of work on conic sections, and had little time for it.

As it turns out, it was all for the best that I did so; it would have been sinful to take valuable time away from my work for such trivialities.

You are still harping on your wine-barrel fluxions and your Army cannon balls. Am I to presume that the whole thing is a joke? Or are you seriously proposing that the path of a cannon ball is related to the phases of the moon? That is rank superstition! Sheer magic! One would think that even a lad as young as yourself would have grasped the basic concept of the Scientific Method by this time.

How have you tested this absurd thing experimentally? Where are your measurements, your data? Your references?

Do not think, my boy, that fame and fortune in the sciences can be achieved by pulling wild hypotheses out of your imagination. There is no short-cut to mastery of a difficult subject like mathematics; it requires years of hard work and study.

As an example of what can happen when one has not learned enough of the subject, look at your own work. You appear to be handling Time as though it were a spatial dimension. You even end up, in several equations, with square seconds! Now, a yardstick will show that a foot up-and-down is the same as a foot East-and-West or a foot North-and-South. But where can you find a foot of time?

Please, dear boy, use your time to study the things you have yet to learn; don't waste it exploring a nonsensical cul-de-sac.

I will send you the outline on conic sections within the week.

Sincerely, Isaac Barrow

1 February 1667 London

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