Quantifying the Unquantifiable: the role of the mathematicisation of philosophy during the Scottish Enlightenment

Abstract

The reception of Newton's Principia in 1687 led to the attempt of many European scholars to ‘mathematicise' their field of expertise. An important example of this ‘mathematicisation' lies in the work of Irish-Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson, a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. This essay aims to discuss the mathematical aspects of Hutcheson's work and its impact on British thought in the following centuries, providing a case in point for the importance of the interactions between mathematics and philosophy throughout time.

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Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 A Dissenting Academy was a school intended for members of Protestant sects whose beliefs deviated from those of the Church of England (McHugh 2014).

2 ‘Ex dono Amici Conjunctissimi Francisci Hutcheson. Rob. Simson Oct[ob]ris Xo MDCCXXIII’ (Gow, 2019).

3 The theory of fluxions refers to the theory of differential calculus which was in development; a fluxion is the derivative of a function.

4 See Section III, Part XII, Axiom 5 of the Inquiry.

5 The subtitle of this essay is ‘Occasioned by Reading a Treatise in Which Simple and Compound Ratios are Applied to Virtue and Merit’, with a footnote citing Hutcheson’s (anonymously published) article (Reid 1843).

6 The term aesthetics is, in general, anachronistic with regard to eighteenth century Scottish philosophy, for although the term was coined in 1735, it did not come into widespread use in this sense until much later (Friday 2004).