The philosophy of mathematics · Auguste Comte
MODERN OR ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY.
_General_ (or _Analytical_) geometry being entirely founded upon the transformation of geometrical considerations into equivalent analytical considerations, we must begin with examining directly and in a thorough manner the beautiful conception by which Descartes has established in a uniform manner the constant possibility of such a co-relation. Besides its own extreme importance as a means of highly perfecting geometrical science, or, rather, of establishing the whole of it on rational bases, the philosophical study of this admirable conception must have so much the greater interest in our eyes from its characterizing with perfect clearness the general method to be employed in organizing the relations of the abstract to the concrete in mathematics, by the analytical representation of natural phenomena. There is no conception, in the whole philosophy of mathematics which better deserves to fix all our attention.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.