232 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



excellent review of Laplace's ' Mecanique celeste ' by 

 Playfair in the ' Edinburgh Eeview ' of 1808. l "In the 

 list of the mathematicians and philosophers to whom the 

 science of astronomy for the last sixty or seventy years 

 has been indebted for its improvements, hardly a name 

 from Great Britain falls to be mentioned. 2 . . . Xothing 

 prevented the mathematicians of England from engaging 

 in the question of the lunar theory, in which the interests 

 of navigation were deeply involved, but the consciousness 

 that in the knowledge of the higher geometry they were 

 not on a footing with their brethren on the Continent. 

 This is the conclusion which unavoidably forces itself 

 upon us. ... We will venture to say that the number 

 of those in this island who can read the ' Mecanique 

 celeste ' with any tolerable facility is small indeed. If 

 we reckon two or three in London and the military 



1 ' Edinburgh Review, ' vol. ii. p. 

 279, &c. John Playfair (1748-1819) 

 was a native of Forfarshire, and 

 Professor of Mathematics, and later 

 of Natural Philosophy, at the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh. "Playfair 

 was struck with the backwardness 

 of the English mathematicians in 

 adopting the results of the Conti- 

 nental analysts. While they boasted 

 of Newton, they were unable to 

 follow him, and the mantle of 

 Newton had indeed passed over to 

 France, where it rested ultimately 

 on the shoulders of Laplace. Play- 

 fair accordingly set himself to dif- 

 fuse among his countrymen a know- 

 ledge of the progress which science 

 had been making abroad. This he 

 did in a variety of ways, by his 

 articles in the ' Encyclopaedia Brit- 

 annica,' by his papers in the Trans- 

 actions of learned societies, by his 

 articles in the ' Edinburgh Review,' 

 and by his class-teaching. As David 



Gregory introduced the Newtonian 

 philosophy, so Playfair introduced 

 the Continental methods into the 

 studies of the University of Edin- 

 burgh " (Sir A. Grant, ' The Story 

 of the University of Edinburgh,' 

 vol. ii. p. 302). 



2 Plavfairhereexceptshis country- 

 man, Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746), 

 ' ' in whose time the teaching of 

 mathematics at Edinburgh reached 

 a point which it cannot be said to 

 have yet surpassed " (ibid. , vol. ii. 

 p. 299 ; cf. also vol. i. p. 271, where 

 a programme published in 1741 is 

 given of the mathematical and phy- 

 sical lectures at Edinburgh, which 

 surpassed probably at that time 

 the teaching of any other English 

 or Continental university). Play- 

 fair might have excepted also Ivory 

 and the Englishman Landen, both 

 of whom were well known among 

 Continental mathematicians. 



