Author: MACLAURIN (Colin):
Title: An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries. In Four Books. Published from the Author's Manuscript Papers. The Second Edition.
Description: London: Printed for A. Millar..., 1750. 8vo, 202 x 214 mms., pp. [xii], xxvi, 412, including half-title, 6 folding engraved plates, contemporary calf, gilt border on covers, red leather label; top of spine chipped, burn mark on front cover,slight general wear, but a very good copy with an unidentified armorial bookplate on the front paste-down end-paper, "Bell 1763" on the top margin of the recto of the front free end-paper adn "Bell 6d. of Mr. Mapletoss" on the top margin of the following leaf. The mathematician and natural philosopher Colin Maclaurin (1698 - 1746) met Newton in 1718 or 1719; Newton encouraged the young mathematician, and his Geometria Organica was published under Newton's imprimatur in 1720. The present work was published posthumously in 1748, two years after the author's death. "MacLaurin discusses Newton's method of investigation and of 'philosophizing', as well as his discoveries, and begins with a long history of natural philosophy since the ancients, in which he again asserts the importance for religion of sound natural philosophy. Though a number of other general expositions of Newton's thought were published during the eighteenth century, MacLaurin's Account has long been recognized as the leading authoritative statement of mainstream Newtonianism" (ODNB). David Hume drew upon Maclaurin's work for his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779), and there are several verbal and conceptual parallels between Hume's text and that of Maclaurin. ESTC gives the following registration /pagination for the octavo second edition:[14],432,[2]p.,XII plates and gives a date of 1756 and suggests that the title-page is a cancel. The pagination in this copy is the same as that recorded in ESTC for the third edition of 1771 ([14],432p.,plates ,

Keywords: mathematics Newton prose


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