No label defined (Q4389715)

There are seven chapters: life (18 pages), Newton's fluxional calculus (14), mathematical analysis (17), algebra (24), the Principia (12), the equilibrium shape of the earth (12), and projective geometry (20). There are 109 listed references. Letters to and from Maclaurin occupy 500 pages of typescript in \textit{S. Mills}'s The collected letters of Colin Maclaurin. Nantwich: Shiva Publishing Limited (1982; Zbl 0516.01024); Maclaurin's book on fluxions occupies two large quarto volumes each of 200 pages with many plates. Hence this book compresses severely, at times so severely that the reviewer cannot recognize the subject. To concentrate on the chapter on fluxions, this chapter lacks the detailed immediacy of \textit{J. Hofmann}'s book Leibniz in Paris, 1672--1676. His Growth to Mathematical Maturity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1974; Zbl 0281.01004). It lacks details on what the fluxional calculus was, due in part to the compression-ratio for this chapter alone. But it also misses the points made in \textit{H. Bos} [Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 14, 1--90 (1974; Zbl 0291.01016)], where the difference between Newton's fluxions and Leibniz's differentials is made clear. In the reviewer's opinion, the author does not keep a clear focus on Maclaurin and his work, and so leads to incomplete understanding. Similar remarks could be made about the other chapters. Overall it gives an impression of what Maclaurin did and what was done in his time.