Space and time in Maclaurin: the case of the shape of the Earth (Q2837154)

Colin Maclaurin (1698--1746) developed essentially Newton's ideas in \textit{Calculus} that were ingeniously commented in his ``Account of Sir Isaac Newton's philosophical discoveries''. The two-volume ``Treatise of fluxions'' was in fact his answer to Dean Berkeley's critical work ``The analyst''. Maclaurin advanced there the theory of fluxions, introduced formally notions of space and time and applied the obtained results to the description of the shape of the Earth.