CHAPTER III 



BERKELEY'S ANALYST '(1734) ; CONTROVERSY 

 WITH JURIN AND WALTON 



74. BiSHOP BERKELEY'S publication of the Analyst'^ 

 is the most spectacular event of the century in the 

 history of British mathematics. The arguments in 

 the Analyst were so many bombs thrown into the 

 mathematica! camp. 



The views expressed in the Analyst are fore- 

 shadowed in Berkeley's Principles of Human Know- 

 ledge (§§ 123-134), published nearly a quarter of 

 a century earUer. The " Infidel mathematician," 

 it is generally supposed, was Dr. Halley. Mathe- 

 maticians complain of the incomprehensibiUty of 

 rehgion, argues Berkeley, ,but they do so unreason- 

 ably, since their own science is incomprehensible. 

 " Our Sense is strained and puzzled with the 

 perception of objects extremely minute, even so 

 the Imagination, . . . is very much strained and 

 puzzled to frame clear ideas of the least particles of 

 time, or the least increments generated therein : 



^ The Analyst : or, a Discourse addresscd to an Infide l Mathe- 

 matician. Wherein it is exainined whether the Oò/'ect, Principles, and 

 Inferences of the Modem Analysis are more dislinctly concewed, or 

 more evidently deduced, than relii^otis Mystenes and Points of Faith. 

 London, 1734. 



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