Brook Taylor and the method of increments

Although students of the calculus are familiar with the Taylor series, few have any knowledge of the originator of this important result or of the role he played in the mathematics of the early eighteenth century. As a member and later secretary of the Royal Society, Taylor was inevitably drawn into the priority dispute on the side of Newton, but as a frequent visitor to Paris he came into contact with the Abbé Conti (who started out as a supporter of Leibniz though late inclined to the side of Newton) and Pierre Remond de Monmort, who played the role of mediator between Taylor and Johann Bernoulli. In 1715 Taylor published his Methodus incrementorum directa et inversa containing the famous series and a number of original applications. The reception of Taylor's work was not helped by the terse and obscure style in which it was written, though Bernoulli's judgement that the work lacked originality and that Taylor was guilty of plagiarism was no doubt distorted by his partisanship on the side of Leibniz in the priority dispute. A new generation of mathematicians, including Daniel Bernoulli, D'Alembert, Euler and Lagrange, acknowledged that Taylor's book had influenced them. The present paper consists of a very competent and penetrating study of the Methodus incrementorum itself together with a new assessment based on a skilful analysis of the available evidence, including unpublished correspondence of Monmort with Taylor and Bernoulli which has not previously been taken into account. After a brief description of the life of Taylor and the mathematicians with whom he came into contact, there follows a short general survey of the Methodus incrementorum. Taylor first describes the method of increments and its relationship to Newton's method of fluxions, then the fundamental principles of this method for the transformation and solution of finite-difference and differential equations. An important aspect of Taylor's work is his development of the theory and application of initial or boundary conditions associated with these equations. Six propositions of special mathematical or historical interest are chosen by the authoress for detailed analysis and comment. Besides the Taylor series itself, these include the transformation of finite-difference equations, the derivation of formulae for the derivatives of inverse functions and applications to isoperimetric problems and the centre of oscillation. In each case, Taylor's work is compared with that of contemporary mathematicians on the same themes. Taylor's well known original applications to the vibrating string and ray of light refracted in its passage through the atmosphere are just mentioned. Following an extensive account of the anticipations of the Taylor series, the authoress reconstructs Taylor's path to discovery, using the new source material. She thus corrects the historical record and concludes that, although Taylor's theorem was anticipated by several others, in the sense that they obtained the form of the series, Taylor was undoubtedly the first to publish the theorem with a proof based on his theory of finite increments, and to call attention to its significance and applicability as an analytical tool, using it chiefly for generating series solutions to fluxional equations of all orders.

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