270 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



36. 

 The 'Edin. 

 burgh 

 Review.' 



science was cultivated at the different Scotch universities, 

 which supplied Oxford with a Professor of Astronomy 

 (preferred to Halley), in the person of David Gregory. 

 " David Gregory not only introduced the ' Principia ' to 

 Edinburgh students, but he also brought them to the 

 notice of Englishmen." ^ The Philosophical (afterwards 

 called the Eoyal) Society of Edinburgh was much in- 

 debted to Colin Maclaurin,"^ who almost alone with Landen 

 and Ivory maintained the reputation of British mathe- 

 maticians during seventy years, whilst the Continental 

 school was revolutionising that science. A successor to 

 Maclaurin in the mathematical chair at Edinburgh, John 

 Playfair,^ introduced the Continental methods into the 

 studies of the Scotch universities about the end of the 

 last century. He was one of the early contributors to 

 the ' Edinburgh Pieview,' which in politics, literature, 

 and science inaugurated a new kind of criticism, and led 

 a powerful attack upon all those traditional forms of 

 government, taste, and learning which prevented the free 

 expansion of ideas and the progress of science and prac- 

 tical interests. Though not always judiciously used, the 



which the following two hundred 

 and eighty years have added no- 

 thing" (Glaisher in ' Eney. Brit.,' 

 9th ed., article "Napier"). 



1 David Gregory (1661-1708) has 

 " the honour of having been the 

 first to give public lectures on the 

 Newtonian philosophy. This he did 

 in Edinburgh five-andthirty years 

 before these doctrines were accepted 

 as part of the public instruction in 

 the university of their inventor " 

 (Sir A. Grant and Chrystal, loc. 

 cit, vol. ii. p. 296). Cambridge 

 writers, headed by W'^hewell, are 

 loath to admit any reluctance on 



the part of their university in ac- 

 cepting the Newtonian philosoj^hy, 

 in spite of Whiston's testimony to 

 the contrary. See on this Whewell's 

 ' History of the Inductive Sciences,' 

 3rd ed., vol. ii. p. 149, &c. 



- Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746) 

 published, 1742, a 'Treatise on 

 Fluxions,' 2 vols. 4to. In 1740 he 

 shared with Daniel Bernoulli and 

 Euler tlie prize of the French Aca- 

 demy for his 'Essay on the Tides.' 



3 John Playfair (1748-1819) was 

 Professor of Mathematics and tlien 

 (from 1805) of Natural Philosophy. 



