Power from natural agents may go by a short line, and then in its activity greater... But if by a straight line then its action is stronger and better, as Aristotle says in Book V of the Physics, because nature operates in the shortest way possible. But the straight line is the shortest of all, as he says in the same place.
De Lineas, Anguilis et Figurisas quoted by A.C. Crombie, Robert Groseesteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953) citing Baur, Ludwig (ed.) Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln (1912)
