length of an arc, and all that need be done is to inscribe in the 
arc a sequence of rectilinear contours of an increasing number 
of sides. When these contours approach a limit, the length of 
the arc becomes the limit of this sequence. The older method of 
determining volumes by liquid displacement is thus translated 
into abstract visual terms by calculus. The principles regarding 
the concept of length apply also to notions of areas, volumes, 
masses, moments, pressures, forces, stresses and strains, 
velocities and accelerations.

     The miracle-maker, the sheer function of the infinitely 
fragmented and repeatable, became the means of making 
visually flat, straight, and uniform all that was nonvisual: the 
skew, the curved, and the bumpy. In the same way, the 
phonetic alphabet had, centuries before, invaded the 
discontinuous cultures of the barbarians, and translated their