Maclaurin, Morality, and the Search for the Missing Notebook

Maclaurin, Morality, and the Search for the Missing Notebook – a talk by David Horowitz, Golden West College (Emeritus), Huntington Beach, CA

Abstract

Scottish mathematician Colin MacLaurin (1698-1746) is best remembered for his A Treatise of Fluxions, An Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries, and an eponymous power series. However it is scarcely known that in 1714 at the age of sixteen, MacLaurin penned a short manuscript wherein he undertook the novel pursuit of applying Newtonian principles to morality and faith. De Viribus Mentium Bonipetis (On the Good-seeking Forces of Minds) remained hidden within the Colin Campbell Collection archives at the University of Edinburgh for over 250 years. This handwritten manuscript, remarkably discovered only towards the end of the twentieth century, provides an extraordinary glimpse into how the young MacLaurin dealt with complex and pressing contemporaneous topics such as Newtonianism, the tenets of the Church of Scotland, and the nascent discourse between science and religion developing in the early eighteenth century.

Additionally, MacLaurin kept a student notebook between 1712 and 1714 while attending the University of Glasgow. This notebook, recently discovered in December 2022, contains a wealth of his observations on various topics such as optics, planetary motion, and centers of gravity. It also features remarkable expository material penned by MacLaurin including an essay on Adam and Creation, a poem praising God and His handiwork, and personal reflections on infinity and the infinite.

This talk will examine both documents by Colin MacLaurin – De Viribus Mentium Bonipetis and the MacLaurin student notebook. These two recent discoveries taken together offer extraordinary insights into the mind of a young man who was destined to become one of Great Britain’s greatest mathematicians.