This is a past event
Scottish mathematician Colin MacLaurin (1698-1746) is well known for his A Treatise of Fluxions (Maclaurin, 1742), An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries(MacLaurin, 1748), and the appellation for a type of power series.
Far more obscure is De Viribus Mentium Bonipetis (On the Good-seeking Forces of Minds). Maclaurin wrote this essay in 1714 when he was sixteen. In it, he tried to apply Newtonian principles to morality.
The short manuscript was uncovered at the end of the twentieth century and has generally been dismissed by historians of mathematics as a “youthful attempt” perhaps “mercifully unpublished” (Grabiner).
However, De Viribus is more than this. It provides a remarkable glimpse into how a talented young man who had just obtained an MA from the University of Glasgow dealt with early Newtonianism, the tenets of the Church of Scotland, and the interface between science and religion in the early eighteenth century.
Isobel was presenting work-in-progress carried out jointly with David Horowitz.
- Speaker
- Isobel Falconer (University of St Andrews)