MacLaurin and Morality

Abstract

Scottish mathematician Colin MacLaurin (1698-1746) is best known for his A Treatise of Fluxions (1742), An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries (1748), and the appellation for a type of power series. However, it is hardly known that in 1714 at the age of sixteen MacLaurin penned a short manuscript wherein he tried to apply Newtonian principles to morality, in an approach to mathematization that suggests strong continuities with earlier centuries. De viribus mentium bonipetis (On the good-seeking forces of minds) remained unpublished and hidden in the papers of the Colin Campbell Collection at the University of Edinburgh for over 250 years; it was only uncovered at the end of the twentieth century. De viribus provides a remarkable glimpse into how the young MacLaurin dealt with early Newtonianism, the tenets of the Church of Scotland, and the nascent interface between science and religion just prior to the dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of De viribus is the personal snippets related to Scottish Presbyterian morality that MacLaurin interjects throughout his mathematical discussion. These are often vague and oblique, and one must look to his mathematics, his contemporaries, and the social fabric of his surroundings to understand them. In the process, one gains insight not only into MacLaurin's family background and personal religious thought, but also into the culture and nature of teaching in Scottish universities at the time. De Viribus not only demonstrates that ideas of mathematising morality were being canvassed in Scotland much earlier than the better known, but less sophisticated, later attempts by the likes of Frances Hutcheson, David Hume and George Turnbull, but suggests continuities with approaches to mathematization in earlier centuries, providing a strong bridge into the Enlightenment era.