The Book of Mechanics

...to be moved by virtue, and other things of this kind proposed to be looked upon, so that it may beget admiration both in the unskilled, from the intuition of the effects themselves, and in the learned, in the varied contemplation of their causes. For example, if we look at those things which are moved by nerves or some instrument, or those which are contrived and made by spirits, about which Heron and others have treated, or finally by other means. Although in what is to be said, we shall discourse upon that part of the mechanical faculty which pertains to weights and the distances existing between them, whose states can be reduced to equilibrium. Which part indeed exists as the chief of the whole mechanical faculty. For this is the part in which it is more openly seen that art overcomes nature; which, in what manner it happens, will become plain from this.

For art, according to the second book of Aristotle’s Physics and the preface of his Mechanical Questions, appears to comport itself in its operations in a threefold way. For it either imitates nature; or it perfects those things which nature cannot perfect; or finally, it performs those things which are done beyond nature; in all of which ways of operating, however, if we consider them diligently, we shall perceive that art always imitates nature. First, indeed, we clearly see many arts imitating nature, such as sculpture and others of this kind. But when art perfects those things which nature alone cannot perfect, as is wont to happen in the medical art, it similarly emulates nature itself, and, associated with nature as its instrument, is said to perfect a natural effect; and then it operates in the same manner as if nature could perfect the thing itself without the help of art, which clearly manifests the excellence of art; since, indeed, unless art extends a hand to nature itself, nature could by no means perfect its own effects by itself. But if art, by imitating nature, overcomes it—so that those things which are made by art occur beyond nature—the ingenuity of art will appear even more excellent. For, indeed, in imitating nature (though this will perhaps seem a paradox, when nevertheless it is most true), it is said to operate beyond the order of nature. For art, with wonderful craftsmanship, overcomes nature by nature itself; disposing things in such a way that nature herself would effect them, if she intended to produce such effects for herself. Which indeed will become more clear by the subject example.