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." J The Philosophical (afterwards 

 called the Eoyal) Society of Edinburgh was much in- 

 debted to Colin Maclaurin, 2 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 

 Play fair, 3 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 Eeview,' 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 ' Ency. 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-and-thirty 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 Whewell, are 

 loath to admit any reluctance on 



the part of their university in ac- 

 cepting the Newtonian philosophy, 

 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. 



2 Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746) 

 published, 1742, a ' Treatise on 

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

 shared with Daniel Bernoulli and 

 Euler the prize of the French Aca- 

 demy for his ' Essay on the Tides. ' 



3 John Playfair (1748-1819) was 

 Professor of Mathematics and then, 

 (from 1805) of Natural Philosophy. 



