Events for January 21, 2010

January 21, 2010

Eugene Bowman, Pennsylvania State University

Ghosts of Departed Errors:  A Look at Bishop Berkeley’s “The Analyst: and the Scientific Community’s Initial Response to It”

Philadelphia Area Seminar on the History of Mathematics, Villanova University | Visit site »

Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Room 103, Mendel Science Center, Villanova University

Abstract. In 1734 Bishop Berkeley criticized the logical foundations of the Calculus in The Analyst and set off a small ‘pamphlet war’. James Jurin and John Walton replied immediately and angrily. Berkeley then responded to each of them. Shortly after this exchange Jurin and Benjamin Robins engaged in a lengthy and eventually acrimonious public debate on the same topic. Somewhat later Benjamin Robins, Collin
Maclaurin, Thomas Simpson and others wrote treatises on “The Method of Fluxions” which were at least in part intended as responses to The Analyst. These exchanges offer a window onto the scientific community’s view of Calculus in its earliest stages. I will attempt to peer through that window.