► 



ANNALS 



OF 



PHILOSOPHY. 



DECEMBER, 1813- 



Article I. 



Biographical Account of Sir Isaac Newton. 



(Concluded from p. 328.) 



IX the year 1704, the Treatise of Quadratures, by Newton, 

 was published. This treatise had been written long before, 

 many things being cited out of it in Newton's letters of Oct. 24, 

 and Nov. 8, 1676. It related to the method of Auctions; and 

 that it might not be taken for a new piece, Newton repeated 

 what Dr. VVallis had published nine years before without being 

 contradicted, namely, that this method was invented by degrees 

 in the years 1665 and 1666. But the editors of the Acta Lip- 

 sica, in their review of this book, (and the author of the review 

 v. as conceived to have been Leibnitz himself,) represented 

 Leibnitz as the first inventor of the method, and said that 

 Newton had substituted Auctions for differences, just as Fabri, 

 in his Geometries Synopsis, had substituted movement for the 

 indivisibles of Cavalleri. This accusation gave a beginning to 

 the controversy. For Dr. Keill, in an epistle published in the 

 Philosophical Transactions for September and October 170S, 

 retorted the accusation, asserting that " all these things follow 

 from the now so much celebrated method of Auctions, of which 

 our Newton was doubtless the first inventor, as will be evident 

 to any one who shall redd his letters published by Dr. VVallis. 

 Yet afterwards the same method was published by Mr. Leibnitz 

 Ed the Acta Fnulitoruni ; only changing the name and manner 

 Voi. 11. N° VI '2 C 



