Essays on the Life and Work of Newton (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APPENDIX I. TO THE THIRD ESSAY (See note I on p. 148.) De Morgan's View Of Leibniz's CHARACTER1 The Leibniz of our day is either the mathematician or the metaphysician. In the first of these two characters he is coupled in the mind of the reader with Newton, as the co-inventor of what was called by himself the Differential Calculus, and by Newton the Method of Fluxions. Much might be instanced which was done by him for the pure sciences in other respects; but this one service, from its magnitude as adiscovery, and its notoriety as the cause of a great controversy, has swallowed up all the rest. 1 [The following is from a biographical sketch entitled '' Leibnitz " which appeared anonymously in the Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs (vol. vi, 1836, pp. 132-136) which was published by Charles Knight at London under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. We know from Mrs De Morgan's Memoir (p. 108), that this article was by De Morgan. "The Life of Maske- lyne," she says, " is one of a series of lives of Astronomers written by him for the Gallery of Portraits, published by C. Knight two or three years before this time (1839). They are those of Bradley, Delambre, Descartes, Dollond, Euler, Halley, Harrison, W. Herschel, Lagrange, Laplace, Leibnitz, and Maskelyne. They are bound up together, and illustrated in his own way, under the title of ' Mathematical Biography, extracted from the Gallery of Portraits, by Augustus De Morgan, H.O. M.O. P.A.U.C.A.R.U.M. L.I.T.E.R.A.R.U.M.' The letters of his literary tail were only B. A., F. R.A.S., besides those expressing membership of one or two lesser scientific societies. On account of the declaration of belief at that time required by the University, he never took his M.A. degree." On the reference...